


A (sort of) Space Hero

by SpacePenguin11



Series: Sam and Rimmer [1]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Slavery, Swearing, dark!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-07-12 04:31:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15987677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpacePenguin11/pseuds/SpacePenguin11
Summary: Rimmer seems to be more cowardly than ever of late, but could a chance meeting with a young woman in distress show the rest of the crew [and indeed Rimmer himself] that there really is more to the hologram than meets the eye?





	1. Chapter 1

The large planet loomed in front of them, it was overwhelmingly breathtaking. 

“So that’s Jupiter?” breathed Lister.

“It is indeed sir”, replied Kryten.

The three of them were in the drive room, Cat was sleeping off his breakfast in one of the bunk rooms.

“I can’t believe we’re gonna see where the ship was built!”

“Look at how big that planet is Lister”, came the nasal tone behind him, “I hardly doubt that we’re going to land smack back outside the JMC Headquarters.”

“If the headquarters are indeed still there Mr Rimmer”, said Kryten, “We must remember sirs, that we are several million years into the future. We have no way of knowing for certain what we will come across on this planet. It would be wise to bring the bazookoids.”

Nothing however could curb Listers excitement. They had been stuck on the ship in deep space for months and he had been going stir crazy as a result. He welcomed the prospect of exploring the planet in front of him.

 

Rimmer himself wasn’t happy about the whole thing. He had spent all morning moaning at the others about how he didn’t think it was a good idea. Unlike them, he had visited Jupiter many times before, it being a mere stones throw from Io. The Jupiter he remembered was a dirty, smog filled eyesore that almost seemed to taint the rest of the solar system. Being a primarily industrial planet, much of the land was populated by factories and ugly tower blocks..there was certainly nothing scenic or interesting there..or at least not when he had been younger. Kryten was right, things could be very different now.

“I’m really not sure about this Lister,” said Rimmer..”It’s like Kryten said, we have absolutely no idea what we could be up against!”

Lister pinched the bridge of his nose, Rimmer’s cowardly whining was really starting to get to him.

“Right, everyone into Starbug, Holly wake Cat up.”

“Righto Dave.” 

“Just a minute”, said Rimmer, “I think it would be better to take the dwarf down. It would afford us better protection should we get into a ...well... a space battle or something.” He tried to blank out the cowardly voice in his head that told him that Red Dwarf, in comparison with Starbug, boasted a much better range of hiding places.

“Rimmer!”, Lister was getting impatient now.

“I think Mr Rimmer may have a point sir.” It was highly unusual for Kryten and Rimmer to agree on something, but Kryten had been having his own reservations about the planet, although he could not for the life of him fathom why. It would be much better to take the ship down.

“Okay then fine! Holly, plot a landing course for Jupiter.”

“Of course Dave.”

Cat entered the drive room. He looked dishevelled and half asleep..  
“Computer man just disturbed my cat nap! It had better be for a good reason!”

“We’re almost at Jupiter”, said Rimmer.

Cat considered this. A new planet to explore meant new shiny things to find..and maybe he could also find some good looking members of the opposite sex along the way. These realisations were more than enough to wake him up.

“How long do I got to get ready!?”

“About an hour,” said Holly.

Cat dashed out of the room. He had a good feeling about this trip and he needed to look his very best.

About an hour later, the four Dwarfers set foot on Jupiter’s concrete surface. They were armed with their bazookoids.  
The landscape was more or less how Rimmer had remembered it, tall office buildings, factories, and run down warehouses. The only difference, he noticed, was that there was no smoke coming out of any of the factory chimneys. 

“It looks completely deserted”, said Lister. 

“I think I may have to agree with you there sir”, said Kryten.

“Are you telling me I went to all this trouble for nothing!” Cat moaned. “I could still be in bed right now!” This planet didn’t look remotely interesting to him, there was nothing fun or shiny to look at and he was already well and truly bored.

They checked out several of the warehouses and factories, but found nothing aside from overturned furniture and broken glass.

“What the smeg happened here?” asked Rimmer.

“I’m not sure sir but judging by the amount of destruction here, I would say something exceptionally powerful has been wandering these buildings.” The hologram and the mechanoid exchanged concerned glances.

“Urgghh I am so bored out my brains right now I can’t even think, let’s go back to the ship!”

“My God Cat, do you ever stop moaning?!” Lister turned round to glare at him and noticed a marked lack of enthusiasm from Rimmer and Kryten as well.

He sighed in frustration.

Kryten felt he needed to say something.

“Pardon me sir, but we have investigated a considerable sum of these buildings here and have found nothing that would be fruitful to us...”

“All right”, cried Lister, “we’ll go back to the smegging ship! All I wanted was for us to take a nice little day trip, get away from the ship for five minutes...”

“Hey! There’s smoke coming out of that chimney”, shouted Cat.

They all turned to see where he was pointing.  
There was indeed smoke billowing out of the factory chimney a little way in front of them.

“What do you think guys? Shall we check it out?”

“Well I suppose it couldn’t hurt Mr Lister.” Kryten was unsure, but they couldn’t risk not exploring the building, there could be a human in need of rescue he told himself.

Cat now felt reinvigorated at the prospect of meeting other beings....and maybe shiny things..”  
“Let’s do it!”

“No I don’t think that’s a good idea”, said Rimmer. “Whoever it is, I’m sure they won’t want us disturbing them..Who’s still up for the going back to the ship plan?” he raised his arm. 

This cowardly whine was the limit for Lister.

“Rimmer your’e a hard-light hologram man, you’ve got the strength of ten men! Why are you always such a smegging coward!”

“Being ma hardlight hologram doesn’t mean you go throwing yourself directly into harms way just for the hell of it!” snapped Rimmer. “Who do you think I am, The Incredible Hulk?”

“No I don’t Rimmer, cos the Incredible Hulk actually did something brave once in a while!” 

Rimmer turned to face Lister

“I’ve done brave things!” 

“No you haven’t!”

Kryten looked uneasily between the two men, it was going to be a bad fight. 

Cat meanwhile sported a huge grin, he always found the “monkeys” entertaining when they were arguing.

“You want to know something Rimmer? If I was invulnerable like you I’d be leading the four of us, not skulking behind and being afraid of my own shadow!”

“Holograms don’t cast shadows!”

“Shut up Rimmer, the point is that you’re invincible!”

“Oh I’m invincible am I? Never mind the fact that any Tom, Dick or Harry could pop along to my projection suite and pull the plug on me!? Do you ever stop to think about how that makes me feel Lister?”

“Oh here we go again! It’s always about Rimmer! Face it man, you’ve never done anything brave in your whole life!”

“Lister, I’m a retired space hero..”

“RETIRED Rimmer, RETIRED! The clues in the name!”

“I still remember my training..”

“Face it Rimmer, whatever part of Ace that was left inside you has well and truly died! “You’re just a no good smegging coward now Rimmer, nothing else!”

“Oh sir’s please stop,” Kryten wailed

“Well at least I have one moment in my life to be proud of! What have you done with your life eh Listy? A lowly third technician, pining after a woman who’d shagged every other bugger on the ship except for you!”

Lister had turned to walk away but he now spun round to face Rimmer.

“Say that again!” he said in a dangerously low voice that made Cat and Kryten feel somewhat uncomfortable.

“Which part Lister? The part about your failed career, or the part about your failed love life?”

Lister stormed up to the taller man and grasped the collar of his tunic.

“Don’t even try it Lister”, Rimmer warned.

“Please Mr Lister sir!” begged Kryten.

Lister glared at Rimmer for what seemed like an eternity. He inwardly cursed Legion for the hard-light technology he had granted to the weasel all those years ago. It had robbed Lister of a good many satisfying punches in the smarmy gits face. The hard-light technology gave Rimmer the ability to feel pleasure but he was completely immune to pain of any kind. Lister backed off. 

“You know what Rimmer? You’re not worth it anyway.” He turned and walked off in the direction of the factory, pausing to turn back round to the hologram with his hands held out in a dramatic gesture.  
“I can just hear your parents now man, Arnold Judas Fucking Rimmer! Biggest smegging waste of space the world will ever know!”

“That told you, Goalpost Head!” sneered the Cat before following Lister towards the factory.

Kryten was left with alone with Rimmer..he didn’t really know what to say or do.  
The hologram was brimming with anger and humiliation. His nostrils flared in indignation and Kryten could swear it looked as if he was going to burst into tears at any moment.  
Listers comment had hurt, it had really hurt.

“We should follow them, Mr Rimmer sir.”

Rimmer attempted to pull himself together in the best way he could, given his current emotional state. He would not give Lister the satisfaction of seeing him upset. He followed on behind the mechanoid.

 

As fortune would have it, the main door to the factory had been left unlocked, and so gaining entry hadn’t been a problem. The corridor they now found themselves in was dank and dusty, slivers of light shone through the broken windows and the walls seemed to be crumbling around them.

‘More destruction,’ thought Rimmer.

“Aww man it stinks in here! I’m gonna need at least ten baths when we get back to the ship!” cried Cat

“Keep it down will you,” hissed Lister, “We don’t know if whatever’s in here is friendly or not, and I don’t want to be attracting any unwanted attention!”

“I thought that’s why we brought the bazookoids!?”

“Yes but that doesn’t mean we want to use them you stupid moggie!” said Rimmer  
The Cat huffed his disapproval but didn’t say anything else.

They rounded a corner and were met with a giant spider web which filled the entire passsage way, forcing them to grope their way through it.

“Make that 20 baths!”

‘I don’t want to think about what size spider made that,’ thought Lister, ‘how have they even survived all these years?’

They continued on in silence for a while until..  
Crash  
“Bugger!”

Lister rolled his eyes, “For smeg’s sake Rimmer! Watch where you’re going!”

 

“Well it’s not my fault some stupid gimboid decided to put a crate in the middle of the corridor!” Rimmer hissed.

“Use your torch!”

“I am using my smegging torch, but I’m shining it in front of me, not down at my feet!”

Keen to prevent round two of the earlier quarrel, Kryten interjected. 

“Sir’s my scanner is telling me that there are two life forms in this building, besides Mr Lister and the Cat of course.”

“Where abouts Kryten?” said Lister.

“Unfortunately sir I cannot say, as the icon keeps moving around, it’s almost as if someone has blocked the tracking signal.”

“Well who would have done that?” asked Rimmer.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be the same entity that destroyed all the buildings sir.”

“Great”, huffed Rimmer.

They had reached a corner where two passages spread out in different directions.

“What’s your verdict Krytes? Should we split up?” 

Kryten considered for moment, “Yes Mister Lister sir, I believe that would be the most productive use of our time.”

“I’m not going with Rimmer,” said Lister.

“Well I don’t want to go with you either smeg for brains!”

“Well I’m not going with Alphabet Head or Novelty Condom Head!” said Cat.

“Well that’s that decision taken care of”, said Kryten. “Mr Lister, you and Cat take the right hand passageway, and Mr Rimmer and I will take the left.”

“Fine with me,”said Lister, “We’ll keep in touch via the radios.”

Kryten wasn’t overly happy about being paired with Rimmer, he found it difficult to hold a conversation with the man that didn’t involve the mechanoid being insulted every five minutes, or made to feel incompetent. On top of that, as Lister had already pointed out, the man’s cowardly nature rendered him more or less useless in a fight despite, being the toughest member of the crew. Out of habit he moved in front of the hologram.

That feeling of despair was haunting Rimmer again. ‘God please let this be as quick and easy as possible,’ he thought to himself.

Kryten stopped suddenly, causing Rimmer to crash into the back of him.

“What the smeg Kryten!?”

“I’m sorry sir, it’s just I think I can hear something.”

“Yes so can I” said Rimmer, “Can you possibly make anymore noise with your feet? It’s like walking down a corridor with a herd of physically challenged elephants!”

“No sir I can hear crying, it sounds like a woman.”

Rimmer stopped and listened, he could hear the crying too.  
“Where’s it coming from Kryten?”

“I’m not entirely sure sir, but I don’t think we are very far away.”

They continued down the corridor and sure enough the crying got louder. They followed the sound until they came upon a steel door with no door handle, nor indeed any feasible way of gaining entry. Rimmer threw all his weight upon it but it didn’t budge. ‘ ‘Odd,’ he thought.

“Well we’re not going in this way,” he said.

Luckily Kryten had spotted a ventilation shaft in the wall, it was in easy reach and he was sure they would both be able to make it through to the other side.

“I’m not going in there Kryten, we don’t know where it comes out.”

Kryten pressed his ear to the grill of the shaft. The crying was now clearer than ever. 

“It definitely leads into the room sir.”

Gradually they made their way into the room, Rimmer surprisingly agreeing to go first. The hologram slipped through fairly easily due his slight build. Kryten had a bit more of a struggle, but with a strong tug from Rimmer he made it through to the other side, collapsing onto the floor in a very undignified heap. 

Rimmer noticed her first while Kryten was still getting to his feet.

“Oh my god Kryten.”

The mechanoid immediately looked up. It was difficult to see straight away as the light was dingy but his eyes adjusted fairly quickly and he then saw what Rimmer was referring to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a reference to menstruation in this chapter.  
> (Not sure if that needs a warning or not!)

In the corner of the room was a young woman with one of her wrists chained to a water pipe that led into the ceiling. Her blonde hair hung down to her shoulders, it was dirty and matted. She was naked, and as the two of them drew closer they noticed how malnourished she looked. There was a big bluish/black bruise on one of her eyes and her body was completely mottled from head to foot with injuries. There was one dog bowl full of water to one side of her and another one that looked like it may have contained something akin to food at some point. The sight in front of them was so pitiful that Kryten was seriously considering engaging panic mode and Rimmer himself seemed to be having trouble taking in the vision in front of them.

“Mr Rimmer sir, this lady has no clothes on! And she’s been hurt!” the mechanoid shrieked.

“Yes thank you Kryten, I have eyes.”  
A pause and then, “We need to help her.”

“Perhaps we should try and calm her down first sir.”

Rimmer nodded his assent and, setting down their Bazookoids, they both approached the woman as cautiously as they could. Rimmer in front.  
The hologram was now close enough to her that his shoed foot made contact with her bare one. She peered at him through the darkness.

And that was when she started to scream.

Surprisingly it wasn’t a frightened scream, it was an angry one. She began to thrash about as much as her chained wrist would allow. Angrily she kicked at Rimmer’s legs and began shouting,  
“Don’t you touch me! Don’t you fucking touch me you asshole!”

This reaction shocked Rimmer, and Kryten looked equally as panicked and confused.

“Do you know this woman sir?”

“I’ve never seen her before in my life!”

“Stay away from me!” the woman cried, “Stay the fuck away from me!”

 

“What’s the matter with her Kryten?” the hologram asked, panic beginning to lace his voice.

“I don’t know sir but I really think you should back off!”

Rimmer obliged, atleast until he was well out of what he deemed as ‘threatening range.’

“I know your game! Don’t think I don’t! I won’t go down without a fight mate, I can promise you that!”

Kryten and Rimmer exchanged confused glances.

“Don’t come any closer! Don’t! Please don’t!”

Her naked breasts heaved with the strain but her anger was beginning to die down. She looked exhausted and Kryten seriously had to wonder when she had last had a good meal.

He spoke up, “Please miss we’re not here to hurt you, I give you my word on that.”

That seemed to calm her a little and she ceased her thrashing, looking up at the pair of them with tear stained eyes. 

Rimmer was slowly edging forward “Kryten’s right, we mean you no harm.”

This seemed to placate her and she opened her mouth to speak, but instead let out a yell of pain.

“What’s the matter with her now?!” cried Rimmer, exasperated.

“I believe you have just trodden on her foot sir.”

Rimmer instinctively jumped back.  
“Oh god I’m sorry!” he began apologising profusely.

Kryten had already dropped to his knees and was examining her foot.  
“It seems to be just a bruise sir. Do you think we should call the others?”  
The mechanoid sounded more than a little concerned.

Rimmer considered this.  
“No”, he said eventually, “We can handle this ourselves.”

The woman’s reaction to him concerned him greatly and so he could understand Krtyten’s reasoning, but he didn’t want Lister here. The scouser would come sauntering on in here trying to take over, trying to rescue the damsel in distress, trying to make himself out to be the hero. All the while he [Rimmer] would be shoved into the background like he always was. Well he wasn’t going to let that happen this time.

 

The woman had stopped yelling but the grimace on her face told of the great pain she was in. She glared at Rimmer with such an intensity that he was forced to back off another four or five steps.

“What should we do!?” he whispered frantically to Kryten.

“Judging by her injuries sir, we need to get her out of here as quickly as possible!”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Break her shackle sir, and we’ll carry her back to the ship.” 

“Are you actually being serious!? Has that trip through the ventilation shaft melted your intelligence circuits?! I can’t get within three feet of her! She’s clearly petrified of me! She’ll start screaming again!”

“Maybe if you were to try a different approach this time sir, perhaps without the foot crushing?”  
This comment rewarded him an icy glare from the tall man.

“Kryten despite what ever you may think, terrorising naked, chained up women does absolutely nothing for my ego! It won’t work!” 

“We have to try sir, it’s the only way we can get her out of here!”

Rimmer considered this for what seemed like an age to Kryten. There really was no other alternative, leaving the poor woman here was not an option.  
“Alright”, he agreed “But you need to help.”

“I will talk to her sir, I will try to distract her.” He began to walk towards the woman, turning back quickly to say “Engaging compassionate mode sir,”

Rimmer rolled his eyes, hoping that the mechanoid would turn out to be right about the situation. He glanced over in the woman’s direction and was dismayed to see that, despite her rage, and colourful use of the English language, she looked fragile and broken.

Kryten had knelt down beside her and taken her hand in what he hoped was a comforting gesture, he had seen humans do it many times before and it usually seemed to help. Rimmer noted that she felt no animosity or fear towards the mechanoid whatsoever, despite his mechanical body and freakishly shaped head.

“What’s so frightening about me?” his brain demanded to know.

Kryten’s hand holding and soothing voice had done wonders at calming her down.

“Now Miss..Umm well could I be so forward as to ask your name Miss?”

She sniffed, blinked away her tears, and in a shaky voice replied  
“Samantha, Samantha Simpson.”

“Well Miss Samantha, myself and Mr Rimmer here are going to help you.”

Rimmer was making his way towards her, taking extra care where he was placing his feet this time.

“No”, she began to struggle again, “No, please don’t let him hurt me!”

“I won’t!” said Rimmer, “I promise I won’t! I’m really sorry about your foot, it was an accident!”

“It’s alright Miss Samantha, Mr Rimmer’s going to help, he’s going to free you.”

She felt the hologram’s presence nearing her and was about to unload another stream of obscenities at him when she saw his face. She hadn’t seen it properly in the dingy light of the room but now it was inches from hers as he knelt down to prise the shackle open.

It was a gentle face, kind, and certainly handsome. Somewhat extravagant nostrils and a scar on his jawline told her this man was well and truly human, well as human as he could be for a projected dead guy.  
“You’re not like him,” she breathed shakily.

“Like who?” Rimmer said softly.

Her exhaustion had returned and she didn’t appear to want to elaborate at the present moment. “Please just get me out,” she gasped.

He bent all his strength on the shackle but nothing happened.  
‘What the smeg?’, he thought to himself and shot Kryten a concerned look. 

“Perhaps try pulling the chain off the pipe sir?”

Rimmer stood up and grabbed hold of the chain and began to pull it with all his might.  
Once again nothing happened.

“Kryten, somethings not right here...I can’t break this chain.”

“Perhaps, try a little harder sir?” Kryten ventured and was rewarded with the Rimmer death stare, something he felt he had been on the receiving end of for quite a while lately. The hologram pulled him over to the corner, he didn’t want to have this discussion in front of Samantha.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Oh we won’t be long Miss,” said Kryten.

When they were in the corner of the room Rimmer whispered.

“The chain and the water pipe have been reinforced somehow Kryten.”

“Reinforced sir?” Kryten paused to think for a moment and then pulled out his scanner and moved across the room to scan the metal objects imprisoning Samantha. She looked at him puzzled and he quickly rejoined Rimmer in the corner.

“Well!?”

“It’s not good sir. This metal contains properties that I have never heard of. I seem to remember reading somewhere that certain types of metal can be conditioned against certain kinds of attackers.”

“You mean the metal in this factory has been conditioned against me?”

“Well not you specifically sir, any kind of attacker would be in the same situation.” 

“Well that explains why I couldn’t get the door open. Isn’t there something on the ship that could cut through it?”

Kryten fixed Rimmer with a look of concern.  
“With respect sir, there is no machinery in the universe that could cut through such a metal as this one.” 

It was now Rimmer’s turn to look concerned.  
“Well how the smeg are we going to get her out?”

Kryten didn't know...upon examining the shackle with his scanner, he had noticed that there was no padlock or key hole. The cuff was solid all the way round, causing Kryten to ponder how it had gone on the young ladies wrist in the first case.

 

“Please get me out of here...please...”

The helplessness in her voice lit a fire inside of Rimmer. He now knew the metal had been conditioned against him but that didn’t stop the raging feeling inside of him that his stupid body couldn’t carry out what should have been a simple task and he began yanking on the pipe itself, growing even more frustrated when that also yielded nothing. 

“Sir, thats not going to work!”

“I...will...get...you...out!” Each word was punctuated by his tugging on the immovable water pipe.  
Finally he felt something give..it was a ceiling tile, and it landed directly on Samantha’s already injured foot.

Rimmer flinched.

“Mate, what have you got against my fucking foot?!” she yelled. 

“Sir, I really do think we should call the others now!”

“I said no Kryten!” This remark was roared with such an intensity that the holograms projection flared to an almost eye squinting level of brightness before settling back down again.

Kryten decided that the best course of action would be to speak when spoken to, at least for the next five or ten minutes at least.

“Are you alright?” Rimmer asked looking down at her.

“No I’m not alright you stupid, clumsy bastard!” She was rolling around in agony.

  
“Is it bad Kryten?”

“It could be a fracture sir, I’m not sure.”

“Right, where’s the first aid kit?”

“Im terribly sorry sir but you see, I think I may have forgotten to bring it....”  
Kryten closed his eyes and waited for the barrage of insults. When he opened his eyes though, Rimmer seemed fed up rather than angry.

“Right well, we’ll have to go back to the ship then wont we?”

They both made to leave when Rimmer felt a hand on his ankle. 

“Please don’t leave me here on my own!”

When he turned round he could see the desperation on her face. He looked at Kryten, who nodded and began to head back to the ship by himself. The mechanoid made his way over to the ventilation shaft in preparation for climbing through, when he had an idea. He walked over and pushed against the door, revelling in the fact that it yielded beneath him.

“The door can be opened from this side sir!” he beamed.

But Rimmer wasn’t listening, he was too busy frowning at Samantha, as if he wanted to ask her something but wasn’t quite sure what.  
Kryten went through the door and began to make his way back to the ship.

Rimmer walked over to Samantha and stood, somewhat awkwardly, trying in vain not to look at her naked body. It hadn’t been so bad a moment ago when he had been focusing all his energy and concentration on trying to free her, but now...he didn’t know what to do with himself.

“You’re tall,” she remarked looking up at him. “Come and sit down next to me.”

Reluctantly he sat down next to her with his back against the wall. He could see her face much clearer now, she seemed very young to him, and there was an innocence about her which belied the bad language she had spouted before. Rimmer was also taken aback by the colour of her eyes, which were a perfect shade of cornflower blue, the left hand one standing out even more against the purplish bruise. He found himself getting lost in them, and strange feelings began an attempt at taking over his brain, he pushed them away.  
She had indeed been cruelly used, there was no doubt about that. Bruises and scratches covered the majority of her body, and Rimmer was even horrified to find bite marks on her chest and shoulders.

“I’m sorry again about your foot.”

“It’s ok.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like a bitch.”

“...I’m sorry”, he repeated.

“It’s ok, it’s ok...I’m sorry I swore at you...  
Will you hold my hand?”

He did so, thankful that some of the awkwardness was passing and that he could hold her hand quite comfortably. He found himself wanting to comfort her in any way he could.  
‘Where is this feeling coming from?’

“Samantha who did this to you?” he asked softly and was dismayed to see tears forming in her eyes.

“Another one like you, a hologram I mean. Except he’s a nasty man”, she shuddered, “He did...nasty things.”

“A hologram did this to you?!”

She nodded and Rimmer all of a sudden felt sick to his stomach.  
“I’m not...”he began.

 

“I know you’re not”, she said, “I know you wouldn’t hurt me...well not intentionally anyway.”  
She noticed the concerned look on his face and squeezed his hand to let him know that the comment had been in jest.  
She was enjoying holding his hand, it was very warm and comforting...it made her feel safe somehow. He began to rub small gentle circles on her knuckles with his thumb which felt amazingly good, she couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her in a pleasurable way.

“I’m sorry I misjudged you,” she said, “I saw your H and I just panicked because I thought you were the same as him.”

“It’s alright,” he said, “I imagine I probably would have done the same thing.”  
‘So that’s what’s been causing all the destruction round here,’ he thought to himself.

 

“What’s your name?” she asked. 

“Rimmer...Arnold...Well whichever you like really. The crew call me Rimmer.”

“Crew? You mean there’s more of you besides the creepy robot dude?”

“Two more. A human and a cat.” 

“Oh I love cats!”

“I’m not sure you’ll fall for this one so easily,” he said

She leant closer to him.

“Ok, they sound interesting...”,her curiosity clearly piqued she asked  
“Did you come by ship?”

“Yes, a big one, its called Red Dwarf.”

“A BIG ship? And its named after a dwarf?!”

“I believe its named after the star...which I suppose probably isn’t particularly big either...”

He smiled at her, relieved at the fact that her eyes were so mesmerising he could now focus solely on her face without being distracted by her naked body. Her beautiful, naked body his treacherous mind told him. He chased that thought away from his mind, telling himself he that he had only been clocking her injuries, that was all it was.  
Or was it?

He decided he needed to distract said mind.

“Do you remember how you got here?”

“It’s hard to remember, I had been getting ready to go to bed...I remember walking into my bedroom..and then not much else. I vaguely remember fighting against something, something tough. After that I woke up here. There were about five or six other women in here, naked just like me, when I woke up. That hologram thing has gradually been taking them somewhere, I have no idea where but they never come back. Sometimes he has a woman with him, but mostly it’s just him on his own. I’m the last one left, I’ve been here on my own for a while...I don’t know why he hasn’t come for me. I just really hope my parents are ok.¨

“Your parents?”

“Yes, I had just said goodnight to them I think...”

‘Oh my god,’ his mind began to panic, ‘I’ve been having inappropriate feelings about an underage girl!’  
This worry had been in the back of his mind when he first saw the youthful demeanour of her face. He put his head in his hands, but Samantha didn’t notice.

“I really hope, whatever that thing is, that it didn’t hurt them. They’re old, they need me to look after them..hence why I’m a 29 year old woman still living with her parents!”

‘29!’ His brain did some ridiculous version of a happy dance, more than a little relived to find that he hadn’t been “gawping” at an underage girl.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine”, he attempted to reassure her, “We can help you check on them when we get you out of here.”

“Still reckoning you can get me out then?” she asked pulling on the chain so that it clanged against the water pipe. “I thought you’d met your match Mr Muscle?!”

He looked sad for a moment and she began to worry that she’d really upset him with that comment.

“We will get you out”, he said, although he was starting to get concerned about how it may have to be done. He saw her broken hand in his mind and shuddered.  
He couldn’t think about that now.

“Please tell me he feeds you, Samantha?” 

“Not for a week now, he’s just disappeared...I’m convinced he’s left me here to die. I’ve been alone for weeks now. I haven’t even heard his loud footsteps, he makes way more noise than you do!”

“But why did he feel it necessary to remove your clothes?”

“I don’t have a clue.”  
It seemed to Rimmer that she was on the verge of getting upset again, but when he turned to look at her face she was smiling at him. It was a beautiful smile and he made a mental note to say or do anything he could to see it light up her face more often.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, prompting him to momentarily tighten his grip on her hand in a reassuring manner. There was something about her, something about being with her that gave him artificial butterflies in his synthetic stomach. They both seemed to feel so easy in each other’s company, almost as if there was an unspoken bond between them.  


Samantha for her own part had been having similar feelings. When he’d taken her hand in his she had had to suppress the urge to shiver...something about his touch had awoken feelings inside her that she had believed were long dead. This guy seemed a fair bit older than her but, her mind reasoned, he was technically dead which meant age didn’t really have a concept here.

 

‘Is he having strange feelings about me?’

They sat in silence for a while holding hands, the atmosphere in the room almost peaceful, despite the horrific nature of the situation.  
Then she suddenly pulled her hand away from his and reached down between her legs.

‘Oh god no! Please no!’ she cried in her head.

Rimmer was horrified when he saw her bring her hand up and he noticed blood on it. He panicked thinking she must have another injury somewhere but then the embarrassment on her face told him exactly what it was.

‘What on Io am I supposed to do now?’ he begged his brain, hoping it would provide some clarity on the situation. 

It didn’t.

Rimmer wasn’t the type of man who got squeamish about menstruation, but he didn’t really know what to say and was desperate that an already unbearably embarrassing situation on her part not be exacerbated. He found himself caring greatly about her feelings and not really understanding why.

‘Should I ignore it? No, if I do that she’ll think I’m embarrassed or disgusted.’ Then he thought perhaps he should comfort her and tell her it would all be fine and that it was a natural bodily process and she shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Hearing that from a man who was pretty much a stranger to her, however, would probably make her feel even more humiliated.

“It’s ok,” he said, irritated to find that that was the best response he could come up with.

‘No it’s not fucking ok!’ Samantha said to herself. She had never felt more ashamed in her life and the tears began to come think and fast now. Here she was, in the company of a man she barely knew, stark naked and now having to deal with Aunt Flo’s shoddy timing. 

‘When was my last one? Was it just before I was captured?’  
She believed it was, which meant she’d been in this hell hole for at least a month.

She squeezed her legs together as if that would somehow magically stop the damn thing. So many thoughts came crashing into her mind...the foremost being 

‘He’s going to leave me, he’s disgusted and he’s going to leave me here on my own...he may not even come back for me.’  
She knew that the latter part of that thought was highly unlikely but her brain was in full paranoia mode and nothing was really making sense right now. She began to sob loudly.

Rimmer had lately discovered that he couldn’t bear to see her cry.  
“It’s ok,” he said and immediately chastised himself.  
‘Say something else you idiot!’

He cleared his throat, “Kryten will be back with the first aid kit soon, they’ll be bandages in there,” he ventured.

Kryten...Rimmer’s light-bee ran temporarily cold. How would the mechanoid react if he saw this? He’d either think it was a wound and try and treat it, or he would be completely perplexed by the situation and Rimmer would have to explain the smegging workings of the female body in front of a woman who’s humiliation level was already through the roof. It was certainly true that the mechanoid had devoted a fair amount of study to humankind and their various ailments, but Rimmer couldn’t be sure that gynaecological processes had been included in that study (especially as there were no women on the ship). He would have to get rid of Kryten, temporarily, give her a chance to get cleaned up. His brain began working overtime, trying to think of a suitable errand that would distract said android.

Samantha’s voice broke in through his thoughts.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry if I disgust you.”

The words were out of his mouth before he even had time to register them.  
“You could never disgust me.”

They stared at each other for a long time. Rimmer could feel that strange ‘bonding’ sensation he had felt earlier.  
‘  
Is she feeling it too, or am I just losing the plot?’  
He hoped for the former but knew that was perhaps just a little too good to be true.

Samantha was definitely feeling something now, an intensity of feeling that she had never felt before in her life. It seemed the more time she was spending with him, the more handsome he was becoming. She felt as if she wanted to throw her free arm around his neck and have him wrap his arms around her, take care of her, protect her. She wouldn’t though, they barely knew each other and besides her current ‘situation’ was already causing more than enough awkwardness for the both of them. 

 

Rimmer suddenly remembered something.

“I read somewhere that women, in your current situation, possess magical abilities.”

“What?” She sounded completely incredulous but he was comforted by the slight smile gracing her features.

“I suppose it could be thought of as witchcraft, in a way.”

She said nothing, but he was relieved to see that she was calming down a bit. 

“I remember it talked about these special huts that were designed for women, for that time of the month, and that they were worshipped and brought gifts and things.”

A pause and then. 

“Have I just made an awkward situation ten times worse??”

“No you haven’t, you really haven’t, she said staring deeply at him. Suddenly they heard a noise outside in the corridor.  
Krtyen.

Samantha heard it too.

“Oh please don’t let him come in here!” she cried desperately, “I don’t want him to see me like this!”

“I’ll get rid of him,”said Rimmer. 

He opened the door just as Kryten was about to knock on it and Samantha could hear them talking in the corridor.

“Good news sir, I’ve brought the first aid kit and also managed to find a spare boiler suit that should hopefully fit the lady!”

“Well done Krtyen! Um I think I heard a noise coming from a little further down the corridor.”

“A noise sir?”

“Yes, I couldn’t go and explore it myself as I didn’t want to leave Samantha by herself but it sounded a bit like a mechanoid.”

“A mechanoid sir!?”

“Yes, the footsteps had a very...metal, clomping sound to them. I really think you should check it out.”

“Of course I shall sir, I won’t be a moment! Here is the first aid kit and the suit.”

Then to Rimmer’s relief he went trundling off down the corridor, no doubt hoping to encounter a Marilyn Monroe bot or something.

Rimmer gave her the suit, bandages, and some cleaning wipes he had found in the kit, and then courteously turned his back on her. It was a slightly ironic gesture given the familiarity which had been forced upon the both of them over the last hour or so, but it felt like the right thing to do.

 

She cleaned herself up and managed to wad up the bandages to make a makeshift pad. She was relieved to discover plenty more in the kit should she need them, and equally as relieved to find that the boiler suit fit her.

“All done,” she said.

Rimmer turned back round to face her and was happy to find that beautiful smile lighting up her face once more.

“Thank you for doing all that for me Arnold. You’re a gentleman,” she said as she curled up on the floor, rested her head on her arm and shut her eyes.

‘Did she just call me a gentleman?’  
It had been so long since anyone had referred to him in that way, not since his time as Ace in fact. Ace Rimmer had received countless praise and admiration from the ladies, but Arnold Rimmer was lucky to receive a thank you these days. 

‘She called me a gentleman.’  
He found he had no control over the smile that swept over his features, nor indeed of the quickening hum and the steadily rising warmth of his light bee. 

Arnold J Rimmer was in love.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: reference to sexual abuse
> 
> Sorry for the shorter chapter. It just felt right as this chapter is mainly focusing on inner thoughts/monologues.

Rimmer stood watching her sleep. God knows she needed it, although the floor looked cold and uncomfortable. He would have given her his tunic were it not digitally attached to him. He wished he’d asked Kryten to bring some blankets back from the ship, and was infuriated that the mechanoid hadn’t taken it upon himself to think of doing that.

His thoughts were racing.

‘I can’t be in love, it’s impossible! You have to know someone to fall in love with them, I mean REALLY know them. None of this is logical...’

He began to pace the floor, as quietly as he could, trying to justify his feelings.

‘Sexual Tension! That’s all it is. You haven’t had sex for years! She’s good looking and you’re sexually frustrated. Once this whole thing is over you’ll forget all about her.’

This thought calmed him momentarily....although...

He remembered the feeling that had coursed through his body when he had first looked into her eyes. It was a feeling of wholeness, a connection if you like. Those beautiful eyes had beckoned him to get lost in them, but they had also made him feel ‘at home’ somehow. Sexual tension didn’t really feel like that did it?

He recalled the somewhat distasteful magazines he’d had occasion to read as a teenager. The pages in them had been more than a little exciting. He no longer held any interest in pornographic content, although occasionally he would sneak a peek at one or two of the magazines that Lister hid under his mattress [and firmly believed no-one knew about] but they just didn’t do it for him anymore. 

Neither did Rachel or any of the other plastic women he’d used over the years. Sex dolls were fine for a quick frustration wank, but he found himself longing for more these days. He craved the sensual, erotic connection that neither of those girls could satisfy. Maybe it was to do with having gotten older... 

That blonde professor had had a somewhat aesthetically pleasing body and he would definitely have been in there had she not gone and flushed herself out of the smegging airlock, after tripping over a stack of paper that Lister had carelessly left lying around. 

But Samantha was different somehow. He didn’t feel the need to be suave or overtly charming towards her. 

She made him want to be....real.

In essence she was everything he craved. An enchanting young woman with beautiful eyes and a stunning body. Her outward body language and expression signified toughness, but there was an inner fragility to her that compelled him to want to protect her.

‘Oh Samantha, what have you done to me?’

 

This was highly concerning.

And what of her thoughts? Did he actually think that someone like her could ever be attracted to a smeghead like him?  
An ugly smeghead, his mind reminded him. He hated looking in the mirror as he couldn’t stand to see the image looking back at him.  
Some days it seemed as if his nostrils had received planning permission to take over the lower half of his face. And that blasted scar...he really hoped she hadn’t noticed that, but the H...he hated that most of all.

The H was a constant reminder to him, and to everyone else, that he was no longer alive. His whole existence [if you could even call it that!] was dependent upon high-tech computer programming and software. Yes, receiving his hard-light drive all those years ago had made his hologrammatic status so much more bearable and the perks that came with it were somewhat impressive, but he was still just a cleverly designed beam of light...whichever way you looked at it.

He shook his head sadly, truly believing that he had not one redeeming feature.  
Young, beautiful women don’t generally find dead men attractive...especially old, dead men. 

He took another look at the woman sleeping peacefully on the floor and made to leave the room.

He needed to get out and collect his thoughts. He needed to get away from her.

He opened the door and almost crashed into Kryten.

“Ooh sorry sir! I checked the corridors thoroughly but I couldn’t find anything there, mechanoid or otherwise!”

“I must have made a mistake then Kryten.”

The hologram sounded more than a little downcast, which concerned Kryten a little.

“Are you quite alright sir?”

“Yes I’m fine!” he snapped.

“You’ve been talking to the lady sir, was she able to give you any idea as to who did this to her? 

Rimmer inwardly groaned, he’d been so caught up in his feelings that he’d forgotten to alert the rest of the crew about the hostile. Samantha truly believed it had gone...but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

“Kryten, this woman was attacked by a hostile hologram.”

Kryten took an unneeded breath, 

“Oh dear that is a very big problem, hostile holograms are exceedingly dangerous. You are more than aware of what your body is capable of sir...we will need to pull the plug on it...sooner rather than later! I did have my suspicions that that was what had been causing the problems round here. Where is it now?”

“Samantha thinks it’s gone, it hasn’t been around for a week at least...well she hasn’t heard it at any rate. Which reminds me, did you bring back any food from the ship?”

“Yes I did sir, sorry I forgot to give them to you earlier,” The mechanoid showed Rimmer three energy bars hidden in a compartment near his groinal attachment.

“You have a storage compartment near your groinal attachment?”

“I do indeed sir.”

“Kryten, we’ve been on a ship together for years! How did I not know this?”

“Well, you never asked sir.” 

Rimmer made to say something back but quickly decided he didn’t have the energy or the patience for it.  
Instead he said, “Keep and eye on her and radio me if you hear that ‘thing’ moving about.”

“I shall indeed sir but where are you going?”

“I need to check on Lister and the Cat, update them on the situation.”

“On your own sir?!”

“Yes Kryten on my own!”

He stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him.  
He could understand Kryten’s reaction, after all Rimmer never volunteered to go off by himself in an unknown location but somehow...being out here felt safer than being in the room at the moment. Safer for his reasoning faculties at any rate.

He radioed the other two men and was relieved to find that Cat answered. He didn’t really think he could handle a conversation with Lister right now, he was still feeling emotionally sore from their earlier altercation.

“What up goal-post head?”

“Where are you two?”

“We’re in a...Oh hold on...”  
Then he heard Lister say something, and Cat came back with

“A holographic projection suite”, he said the words slowly and carefully, as if he were afraid of getting tongue-tied.

“You’re in a projection suite!?”

“Yeah bud, what of it? I’m reckoning it’s a lady goal-post head and I’m looking forward to her pressing her hard-light...”

Rimmer was instantly filled with panic.

“Right, stay there and don’t move!”

“What you mean don’t move?”

“I mean don’t move! Describe how to get to you, I’m coming now. I need you to listen to me very carefully and do exactly as I say.”

 

Samantha slowly awoke from her nap. She wasn’t sure exactly how long she had been asleep for, but Arnold had gone and the weird robot guy was back and treating her injured foot.

“Hello Miss,” he greeted her when he saw she had awoken.

“Hi...I’m sorry I don’t think I ever got your name??”

“Kryten, Miss. Don’t you worry, I’ll soon have your foot fixed up. I have some energy bars here for you as well.”

“Thank you!” she said, immediately snatching one of them from him and tearing open the wrapper.

Kryten was pleased to see her eat, he put the remaining bars down next to her and carried on tending to her injury. 

The energy bar tasted dreadful, she couldn’t even work out what flavour it was supposed to be, but it was food, and right now her stomach wasn’t feeling picky. She finished the first one and immediately began work on the second one.  
She regarded the mechanoid as she ate, he certainly looked very peculiar but seemed nice enough. 

“Where did Arnold go?” she asked him.

‘She’s calling him Arnold?’ Kryten thought to himself, ‘They must have been getting on well in here.’

“I believe he’s gone to check on the two other members of the crew Miss.”

“The human and the cat right?”

“Yes Miss.”

She cast her eye about her surroundings, almost seeming to see them in the sober light of day 

Somehow with Arnold gone..the room seemed colder and emptier...more frightening. The reality of her situation had come crashing down again.

‘Don’t let him get in your head Sam!’ 

But he must have done to some degree. She remembered the earlier feeling of wanting to throw herself into his arms.

Samantha Simpson would never before have entertained the notion of doing that.

Men were trouble...end of. 

She had been in love when she was eighteen. His name was Daniel, he was a couple of years older than her and had the most mesmerising emerald green eyes she had ever seen in her life. He had a kind smile, he treated her well, and she truly believed she would have got married to him. Then the beatings had started. To begin with it was a quick backhand slap to the face when she had burnt the dinner or damaged one of his shirts in the tumble dryer. Soon, however those slaps became punches, punches that were not only limited to her face. Her chest, stomach, legs...every part of her body was apparently game territory.

‘Why did I stay with him?’ her brain demanded of her. At the age of 29 it was easy to look back and know with certainty that she should have got the hell out...but she had loved him.  
She had held on to hopes that each episode of abuse would be the last.  
That he would suddenly find a way to control his anger and their relationship would be all hearts and flowers like it had been before, but she had been kidding herself.

After beating her senseless he would take her in his arms, calm her and tell her how sorry he was and how he would never do it again.

All lies.

She had eventually left him, after a year or so of being beaten. She had found out he’d been cheating on her with her best friend. It seemed that the beating had been tolerable when she believed that she was the centre of his world, but finding out that she was so unimportant to him was just the wake up call she so desperately needed.  
She had packed a bag and moved back in with her parents. It was far from ideal, but it was away from Daniel and that had been good enough at the time.

She had held a crummy waitressing job that didn’t pay well and most of her money was spent on alcohol, so it would be a long time before she could even consider getting her own place. She had lied about her parents needing looking after. If anything they looked after her, financially speaking. She supposed she hadn’t wanted to admit to being a jobless boozehound.

She wasn’t sure that she would ever be able to break away from her mum and dad.

But the one thing she was sure of from that moment on was that she would never let a man hurt her again. She had had a few relationships throughout her twenties but they never lasted. She was scared to let a man get too close

She wanted to keep her distance from them.

Unfortunately that decision had been taken out of her hands at a Christmas party last year. A man named Steve (a long standing friend of her fathers) who was over from Io had cornered her in the basement on Christmas Eve. She had gone down to fetch more candles for the dining table when he had suddenly appeared behind her. He’d been a staple part of her life for as long as she could remember, and she’d always loved him like a big brother, or an uncle. That night however, something in him seemed to snap. That menacing look on his face, she could still see it whenever she closed her eyes. She had tried to run but hadn’t got very far. He had kissed her, forcing his tongue into her mouth, and had then bent her over the table and had his way with her. Then he just went back up to the party as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile she was left trembling and hyperventilating, trying to fix her underwear and her dress. 

She had suffered with panic attacks before that night, but they had since become a much more frequent occurrence.

When she had eventually gone upstairs, she herself had carried on like nothing had happened. It had made her feel dirty and disgusting and she couldn’t bear to even speak of it.  
To this day she had never told anyone, not even her parents. Although she doubted they would have believed her at any rate. Steve Marshall was well respected on Io and Jupiter. He had a wife and three perfect children. Jupiterians and Ionians alike always referred to him as ‘one of the good guys.’

After that she had taken to drink even more in an attempt to try and block out what had happened, and pretty soon it became her one and only coping strategy. Her drinking got so bad that she lost her job and ended up stuck on the dole, which meant permanently living at home with her parents.

And that was the life of Samantha Simpson, up until the point that she had been kidnapped by Mr psycopath hologram and chained up in this dump.  
He had attacked her viciously, but she had brought those attacks on herself. She had fought him every step of the way.  
There were a fare few soft-light holograms on Jupiter and so she was more or less familiar with them. But this dude was very different, he was solid, almost like a human. But he was completely invincible to her attacks. ‘What the hell kind of hologram is this?’ she had thought. Even upon discovering his invincibility though, she had still fought and kicked and punched...she wouldn’t just lie there and let him carry her off to some unknown fate without putting up some form of a fight.  
Her deep rooted sense of integrity wouldn’t let her.

Of course he got what he wanted, she was imprisoned in here after all.  
She had fallen prey to another man again...she reasoned that she must have the word ‘victim’ tattooed on her forehead.

Men were trouble. Men were animals who took what they wanted, never minding how many women they hurt in the process.

But that was ok, because that was what kept her in her bubble. Her magical little bubble that told her she would be safe inside it, so long as she never trusted any man ever again.  
It promised to keep her safe from hurt.

What about Arnold though? The tall, dark blue stranger who had walked into this room and turned her shitty little world upside down. He had well and truly upset the status quo. 

He had made her laugh and smile in this world of pain that she now found herself in.  
He had distracted her from the horror of her situation.

He was also extraordinarily handsome.

She was convinced he would have got up and left over the whole period thing, making some awkward comment about needing to go off and do something. But he hadn’t, in fact he’d done all he could to preserve her dignity.

The more she thought about him, the more she could feel this invisible rope tied around her middle, threatening to pull her out of her bubble, threatening to make her trust again.

She wouldn’t though. At the end of the day he was a man. She had noticed earlier that he had anger issues, so he was probably a violent man. 

‘So why did you tell him you knew he’d never hurt you?’

The truth is she really did believe it on the surface but deep, deep down she had a phobia of men that would take a long while to overcome.

Could he be a potential rapist as well?

The idea seemed somewhat ludicrous as he’d been in a room with her on his own while she was naked and chained up and he hadn’t tried anything.  
Besides she didn’t even know if he had any functioning genitalia, it was probably a ken doll situation down there or something. 

He had stolen a couple of glances at her body but thankfully not in a creepy way. There had been no leering.

‘Did he like what he saw...?’ was the thought that bubbled up from her subconscious mind. She dismissed it.

So more than likely not a rapist then, but the jury was still out on his violent behaviour. 

‘Don’t be an idiot Sam, you know he’s a good one. You saw something in his face. Why else would you have been so keen to hold his hand?’

There began a battle over heart and mind. Her mind told her to stay in her bubble, her heart begged her to come out of it.

God she could really use a drink right now.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got any vodka in that magical little compartment of yours Kryten?”

Kryten was perplexed for a moment or two, an alcoholic drink seemed like a strange request from someone at a time like this. Understanding human behaviour though was an ongoing learning curve for him.

“I’m afraid I haven’t Miss but there are some beverages of that nature aboard the ship.”

‘Not much bloody good to me now though is it,’ she thought.

“How is the pain now Miss?”

“Its a lot better, thanks.”

“I’m glad to hear that, I have bandaged it all up for you but you will need to keep off it for the next few days at least.”

“Don’t see a problem with that Kryten, do you?” she said, looking pointedly at the chain.

“Well no Miss I suppose not, although we are putting together a plan to get you out!” 

Kryten was a master at lie mode now, but it didn't matter too much as Samantha was feeling tired again and barely noticed what he had said. She lay down just as she had before and prepared for her second nap.

Kryten finished packing up the first aid kit and then came over to sit down next to her. Mr Rimmer had requested that he keep an eye on the young woman and he would do just that. He had become a lot more confident at dealing with Rimmer over the years, and tried exceptionally hard now not to be bullied by him. But in this instant he was more than happy to look after the lady, protecting humans was at the forefront of his software and it made him feel good when he could carry out this task successfully.

He just hoped against hope that the three men would all come back in one piece.


	4. Chapter 4

Over the course of him and Cat wandering the factory corridors, Lister had begun to feel very guilty about what he had said. Bringing Rimmer’s parents into the argument had been completely out of order and he wasn’t even entirely sure why he’d said it. He’d been feeling pretty fed up lately, maybe his midlife crisis was returning?  
Perhaps Rimmer had just been someone to unload his rage onto?

‘I went too far though,’ thought Lister.

 

 

They had arrived at the projection suite not more than five minutes before Rimmer had radioed them. Lister had instantly recognised the room for what it was. The numerous switches, lights, and computer screens spewing out code, bore an absolute resemblance to the suite on Red Dwarf. Lister had wandered around the room, glancing his eye over the computers and read out screens. Cat had found a reflective piece of glass in the corridor which was currently holding his attention.

Lister had never been able to grasp Holographic Science. On countless occasions Kryten and Rimmer had tried to educate him, but it always ended up going over the top of his head. There were too many equations and variables and other ‘sciencey’ things. 

Rimmer, however, had certainly impressed him over the years. Kryten and Holly had been preprogrammed with the ability to program and maintain holograms, but Rimmer had had to learn from scratch, and he had devoted years to studying the subject. He couldn’t pass an officer’s exam but he was more than a master at Holographic Science. 

His determination to study, Lister suspected, had been born out of wanting to be in control. He had hated being at the mercy of a sanitation droid and a senile computer. Of course, he still needed Kryten for the times he was forced into offline mode and couldn’t physically repair himself.

Rimmer wanted as much control over his programming as possible. The more control he had, the less he felt like a computer simulation. And the less he felt like a computer simulation, the more he felt like a human. 

 

Suddenly there was a noise in the corridor.

“Cat, what you up to out there?” he called out, opening the door.

But Cat wasn’t out there.

What was out there made Lister’s heart beat double time and cause the panic sensors in his brain to start shooting off.

 

A male figure dressed all in black was standing there in front of him. His skin was almost as white as a sheet, but the most frightening thing of all were his eyes. They were blacked out, devoid of anything human. Covering the majority of his forehead was a huge black H.

 

The man in front of him growled in a guttural tone that sent shivers all the way down Lister’s spine.

“Oh my god,” he said

Cat instantly appeared from the opposite corridor.

“Hey, another alphabet head!” he said, pointing and laughing.

“That’s right Cat, and something tells me he doesn’t want to be friends!”

He addressed the hologram, hoping that maybe he would respond to reason.

Lister knew very well that, with the exception of Kryten, Rimmer didn’t like people wandering around his holo-suite. 

“Hi mate, um sorry we were in your suite..we got lost and umm.”

The man in front of them suddenly smashed both his fists out sideways, crunching through the metal walls.

“He definitely doesn’t want to be friends bud,” said Cat, instinctively firing his bazookoid at the hologram’s chest.

Lister angrily shoved the barrel of the gun down.

“Invincible Cat, remember?! All you’ve done is piss him off!”

A fist was suddenly flung in their direction and they only just managed to duck away from it.

“Well I’d like to know what your bright idea is?” hissed Cat.

“There’s only one thing we can do Cat!”

“And what’s that?”

“Run!”

As luck would have it, there was another door at the other end of the room, and they raced through it and out into the corridor the other side. They kept on running, with Cat gliding easily ahead and Lister just about managing to keep up with him. The Scouser didn’t think he had ever run so fast in his life. 

They had rounded three corners in an effort to lose him, but Lister had forgotten in his panic that hard-lights could be exceptionally fast when they chose to be, and the heavy steps behind them were rapidly closing in. 

He stood panting, trying in vain to think of something they could do.

‘Come on brain! Don’t smeggin let me down when I need you the most!’

There was no way they would be able to fight him and they clearly couldn’t outrun him.  
Lister was about to give up and surrender to the thing when he suddenly remembered the glitch. 

The Spatial Awareness Glitch was a substantial flaw in the programming of holograms. As a result, they tended to be more clumsy than the average human and could actually be stunned if they hit an object at high speed.

A rapid image of the first time he had witnessed the glitch came soaring into his view. Many moons ago Rimmer had come careering into their bunk room at high speed and had crashed into one of the Scutters. The hologram had then stood there dazed for at least a minute, taking two or three steps back and slowly shaking his head almost as if he were suffering from concussion.

“Rimmer it’s only a Scutter man!,” he had said, but Rimmer had been completely out of it, to the point that Lister had begun to laugh. Of course when Rimmer came back to himself he hadn’t found it funny at all, which had made Lister laugh even more.

Being chased round the ship by an incensed hologram who had just discovered tobacco ash on his bunk was a somewhat unnerving experience, and so Lister used to block the corridors up with boxes. The glitch also seemed to affect the hologram’s short term memory, as by the time he caught up with Lister, he hadn’t the slightest clue why he had been chasing him in the first place. 

 

Lister had never been more grateful for that glitch than he was today.

He dived into the nearest room and was pleased to find a chair in the corner of it.  
He then carefully placed the chair in the middle of the corridor.  
They both raced on and were relieved to hear a crashing sound behind them, followed by a furious growl.

‘It worked!’ Listers brain cheered. 

They came across a small room on the left which seemed like it had once been an office of some sort. The two men raced inside and shut the door behind them, both panting like they’d just run a marathon.

When they’d caught their breath, Lister shoved Cat into a cupboard on the far wall and then climbed in himself.

“Crap I hate small spaces,” Lister whined

“Then why did you bring us in here?!”

“Cos its a dam site safer than being out there right now! And keep your voice down! We don’t know what this things hearing capabilities are!”

‘What’s Rimmer’s hearing like?’ he asked himself, and was ashamed to find that he didn’t have a clue, despite having known the man for years.

 

“Can you hear anything Cat?”, he asked, knowing for a fact that the felines hearing was much more sensitive than his own.

“Not yet.”

Lister was petrified. 

‘I am not dying in this smeggin cupboard, it’s not happening...there’s so much I still want to do with my life! So much more curry I want to eat...’ His mistakes and failures all came flooding into his mind at a mile a minute.

‘If I only I could have...’

“I can hear something now bud!”

Lister listening carefully until the sound became audible to his ears. 

They could both hear the sound of footsteps out in the corridor and that’s when Lister’s breathing began to get erratic.

“Bud you need to cut that out!” hissed Cat, “He’s gonna hear you!”

“I’m trying!”

Lister could feel his chest beginning to tighten in panic, which was now making his breathing even more difficult.

“How are you not scared!?”

“I’m a Cat! We don’t do scared!”

This was complete nonsense, Cat’s six nipples were majorly tingling, and not in a good way, but he was far too proud to admit that he was just as terrified as the Scouser was.

The footsteps were now outside the door and once they entered the room both men knew they were done for.

Lister instinctively grabbed hold of Cat, trying as hard as he could not to make too much noise but he couldn’t prevent the whimpers that were escaping his throat.

 

The hologram had apparently heard the whimpering and was now making it’s way over to the cupboard.

 

‘Well this is it,’ thought Lister. ‘I’m actually gonna die. I’m gonna die in a dingy cupboard, in some smeggin factory, clinging onto a humanoid feline!’  
Oh smeg, please just let it be quick?’ 

His uneventful life briefly flashed before his eyes. 

A hand grasped the handle of the cupboard and both men squeezed their eyes shut and huddled even closer, fully prepared to meet their fate.

Whereupon there came a voice that was literally music to Listers ears.

“What are you two gimboids doing in here?!”

Dave Lister had never been more grateful to hear those clipped Ionian vowels and he almost fell into Rimmer’s arms as he tumbled out of the cupboard.

“Oh smeg Rimmer, you have no idea how pleased I am to see you!”  
He panted, trying hard to calm his racing pulse. “

“How did you know we were in here?”

“Because I could hear your snivelling down the end of the corridor.!”

“I gotta say goal-post head, for once, you ain’t my least favourite person!”

Rimmer was frowning at the two of them.  
“Which part of ‘Don’t move’ do you not understand?”

“Keep your voice down Rimmer! I don’t want to be attracting that things attention!”

Rimmer paled.  
“You’ve seen him?”

‘Oh my god,’ he thought, ‘Samantha and Kryten.’

“Where did he go?!”

Now it was Listers turn to frown.  
“You know about him?”

“Where did he go Lister?!” the hologram grabbed Lister by his collar.

“Rimmer what the smeg?!” shrieked the Scouser.

“Hey, cool it bud!” said Cat shoving Rimmer’s shoulder.

“Sorry Listy”, the taller man said, letting Lister go and backing away slightly.  
“I just really need to know where he went!”

“I don’t know Rimmer! He was chasing Cat and me round the place so we ran in here and hid in this cupboard. We thought you were him!”

“Why didn’t you switch him off like I told you to?!”

“You never said anything about switching him off!” hissed the Scouser.

“Yes I did, I told YOU over the radio!” he said pointing at Cat.

Both men turned on Cat with a glare he didn’t particularly care for.

He grinned inanely. 

“I knew there was something I was supposed to remember!”

This time it was LISTER grabbing CAT’s collar.

“You stupid animal! You nearly got us both killed!”

Rimmer pulled him off. 

“Lister we haven’t got time! Can you remember the way back to the holo-suite?”

“I can!” said Cat readjusting his suit where Lister had wrinkled it.

The three men began to make their way through the corridors, as quietly as they could.

Lister couldn’t help but admit to himself that he felt safer now that Rimmer was with them.  
Surely Hard-Lights couldn’t destroy other Hard-Lights?

Rimmer pulled out his radio and spoke in a hushed tone.

“Kryten?”

“Yes sir!” the mechanoid’s voice came booming through the speaker.  
Cat and Lister glared at Rimmer, who rolled his eyes.

“Kryten, I need you to speak quietly.”

When the mechanoid spoke again it was in a much softer tone.

“Of course sir.”

“Are you both alright?”

“Yes sir we are fine, is there a problem? Should I come and join you?”

“No, stay where you are. That thing is on the loose again, I need you to look after Samantha. I’m going to kill the power on it and then we’ll rejoin you ok? Contact me if you hear anything moving about in the corridor!”

 

“Well, alright sir...But please don’t be too long.”

Lister was more than a little surprised to find Rimmer taking charge of the situation and giving orders. Of course, giving orders was something that Rimmer did best, but usually they were ridiculous and served only to boost his fragile ego.

For once, the hologram was pulling rank and actually doing a pretty good job of it. 

‘Maybe there’s a little more Ace left in him than I thought.’ 

 

“Who’se Samantha?” he whispered when Rimmer had finished talking to Kryten.

“She’s a woman Kryten and I met downstairs. She’s chained up. This ‘monster’ kidnapped her, attacked her, and is now holding her prisoner.”

“Smeg,” said Lister.

They walked on in silence for a bit until Cat said.

“I don’t know about you monkey but I am seriously not looking forward to round two with that guy.”

“Me neither. You should see him Rimmer, he takes horrific to a whole new level!”

“Yeah he’s even uglier than you!” said Cat.

Once they had reached the holo-suite Rimmer walked straight in and turned the rogue hologram’s power switch off.  
The majority of the equipment shut off and Lister breathed a big sigh of relief.

Rimmer began to work on one the consoles that still had power.

“Nice one Rimmer,” he said, but found that the hologram completely ignored him.

Lister had hoped that the hologram had got over the argument, but it now seemed clear to him that he had just ‘put it on the back burner’ while they were dealing with the more pressing situation of avoiding becoming hologrammatic toast.

Now the threat had been lifted, the atmosphere was more sour than ever.

“So whatcha doing now?” 

“I’m disabling his light-bee so he can’t reboot from there.”

Lister glanced in the Cats direction and was pleased to find him engaging in one of his many daily catnaps. 

He cleared his throat and moved over to stand next to the hologram, so that he could talk to him while the other man was working.

“Look Rimmer, I’m sorry for calling you a coward.”

“But I am though aren’t I Lister?”  
Everyone on the smegging ship thinks so! Do think I don’t know that!? Do you think I’m really that ignorant?! Oh look here comes trouble! What’s Rimsy’s best plan of action!? Find a good hiding spot! That’s about right isn’t it!?”

After a pause he said  
“I always let people down.”

“”That’s not true Rimmer.”

“Except to my parents apparently! I’m a ‘fucking’ waste of space to them aren’t I?”

Lister flinched, Rimmer never used the F word.

 

“I only said that to piss you off man.”

Rimmer turned round to face him.

“Why on Io would you want to do that?” he asked, arms folded across his chest.

Lister stared at him in disbelief for a moment or two.

‘Even after all these years he still has no idea how irritating he is to be around sometimes,’ he thought.

“Well, to be brutally honest Rimmer, sometimes your a smeggin pain in the backside!”

“I am not!”

“You are! You’re impatient, you’re bad-tempered, you’re conceited, you’re arrogant, you’re sickeningly smug...the list goes on!”

Lister expected an arrogant retort, but the look in the other man’s face was one of doubt rather than anger.

“I’m not those things,” he said,  
“Am I?”

 

‘He actually doesn’t see it,’ thought Lister.

Unlike Krtyen and Cat, Lister had always wanted to believe that there was a good guy deep inside Rimmer. Once you had dug away at all the neurosis and the bitterness (which were all just defence mechanisms anyway) you could sometimes catch a glimpse of that decent guy.

Lister believed he was catching a glimpse of him now.

“Lister, I, I just find things difficult sometimes...”

“What things?”

Rimmer considered for a moment or two and when he spoke again it was in a much more intensive tone than his usual one.

“Do you know what it’s like not to be able to feel pain Lister? 

The Scouser shook his head.

‘It’s one of the worst things ever. Pain makes you feel alive, case in point I suppose.”

“Rimmer.”

“You think you know everything about me don’t you? Did you know that there are times when I crave that pain so much that I’ve mutilated my body from head to toe with each and every implement I could find on the ship! 

But nothing works Lister,” he said, screwing his eyes up in frustration.  
“Nothing works.”

“I would give ANYTHING to be alive again! To feel pain! To eat because I need to rather than just because I want to, to take in a big breath of fresh air!  
To get this infernal letter off my bloody forehead!” He said smacking the heel of his hand against his H. 

“I know it gets to you sometimes Rimmer.”

“Every day Lister, it gets to me everyday.  
“So I’m sorry if I’m a ‘smeggin pain in the backside’ at times, but...it’s just my way of coping.”

That made sense at least. In fact, that was probably the most sense the man had made in years. Lister hadn’t had a clue about the self harming. He was seeing a very different side of Rimmer right now, and this side wasn’t driving him crazy.

 

After a while Rimmer met Listers gaze. 

“I’m sorry for what I said about Kochanski.”

“Don’t be man, how am I to know she didn’t sleep with every guy on the ship? All I can say for certain is that she didn’t sleep with me.”

“Nor me.”

Lister thought for a moment.

“Perhaps your nostrils were enough to scare her off of the both off us!” he said grinning.

Rimmer said nothing but Lister could see the traces of a smile at the corners of his mouth. 

A few moments of silence passed, the only sound being Rimmer’s tapping on the keyboard.

“Oh my god,” he said

“What?”

“There’s something seriously not right with this thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, so the depth of his alpha channel is...’

“In English Rimmer!

“Right, ok” said Rimmer, pinching the bridge of his nose.  
“He hasn’t been programmed from a human template.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning there is nothing remotely human about him. He has no personality, no emotions, no remorse.”

“How is that even possible?” 

“I don’t know, it’s beyond my knowledge,” said the taller man, shaking his head.  
“He’s essentially a programmed killing machine Lister.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that impression when I met him. How are you getting on with disabling his bee?” 

“Just finished,” said Rimmer tapping the final button.

“So he’s completely offline now.”

“He’s as dead as a hologram can be.”

‘Well thank bloody smeg for that!” sighed Lister.

“Come on,” said Rimmer, “Let’s get down to Kryten and Samantha.”

“Ah Yes, Samantha...What’s this Samantha bird like then?”

Rimmer had been making for the door but at this he stopped and turned round to face Lister.

“She is not a bird Lister!”

“Well, what is she then?” said Lister, sounding puzzled.

“She’s a woman.”

“Same thing in my books!”

“No it is not the same thing Lister!” 

“Ok,” Lister sighed, “What’s she like?”

“I don’t know Lister, I don’t really know her...We only met briefly. How is it any of your business anyway?”

This last comment was spoken with the good old asperity that his friend was famous for. It was just another one of the hologram’s many defence mechanisms. Lister could just about see the beginnings of a pink tint spreading across the other man’s cheeks.

“Are you blushing Rimmer?” he asked, barely able to hide the jest in his voice.

“I most certainly am not!” came the indignant reply.  
“It must be a glitch.”

‘Glitch my ass,’ thought Lister.

“You’ve got feelings for her haven’t you?”

“No I have not!”

“I’ll bet you have,” continued Lister in a mocking tone, “I’ll bet you changed into your officer’s uniform and stuck a pair of hologrammatic socks down your trousers to impress her didn’t you?”

“Do you think this is funny Lister?” replied Rimmer, growing angrier by the minute.

“No Rimmer, but what I do find funny is the fact that you seem to have the hots for the woman but you’re in far too much denial to admit it! I’ve known you a long time remember!”

He got no response.

 

“Rimmer man, you’ve only known her five minutes.”

“You think I don’t know that?!” he snapped.  
“She’s different Lister, I don’t know what it is about her...But she’s different.”

“Ok well, how does she feel about you?”

“Well what do you think Lister?” the hologram asked, holding his hands out by his sides.

“I’m not exactly a smegging oil painting am I?”

“What about that ‘confidence speech’ you made on your dictaphone?  
I thought that had really helped you feel better about yourself?”

Lister had meant to be sincere, but his voice broke slightly at the end of his sentence.

As he had expected, he received what Kryten, Cat and him had come to refer to as the “Refrigerator Glare.”

He quickly changed the subject.

“Has she said anything to you that might mean she’s interested in you, in that way?”

 

“She did call me a gentleman.”

“What, just out of the blue?”

“No I, I er, helped her out with something.”

“With what?”

“That’s not important, what is important is the fact that she called me one! That’s got to mean something hasn’t it?”

“Sorry to rain on your parade man but she was probably just being polite. She was probably just really grateful that you helped her out.”

Rimmer considered this, and realised with a sinking feeling that the Scouser was very probably right.  
He sighed

“She’s stunning Lister, absolutely stunning!”

“You’ve never struck me to be the type who believes in love at first sight, your’e not exactly the old romantic type are you Rimmer?”

“Well I’m feeling pretty damn romantic about this situation, I can tell you.”

“Ok, well if you really do like her then you need to tell her how you feel.”

“What and make a complete an utter idiot of myself!? Besides, it could never work out.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Oh believe me I do Lister! There’s...There’s somewhat of an age gap.”

“For smeg’s sake Rimmer, people of different ages hook up all the time!”

“She’s 29 Lister.”

“29!” cried Lister, “Rimmer man, that’s creepy!”

“Oh well thank you very much Lister! It’s nice to know I can rely on a friend to make me feel better about things!”

The blush was now back with a vengeance.

“Sorry man but it’s a lot to take in! She’s really only 29?”

“Yes Lister,” said Rimmer standing up.  
“But I’m going to make sure that she never knows my true feelings, and that’s all they ever will be.  
Feelings.  
I’m certainly not planning on acting on them any time soon.”

But Lister wasn’t convinced, he didn’t think he’d ever seen Rimmer more infatuated.

“Come on,” said the hologram, thumping Cat on the shoulder as he walked past him.

“Hey wheel-arch nostrils!” said Cat rubbing his shoulder,“ Ain’t you never heard of a gentle wake up call!?”

 

“Its us,” said Rimmer knocking on the door of Samantha’s prison.

Kryten let them in and Rimmer once again found himself in the presence of a woman who was driving him crazy for no logical reason whatsoever.

“Are you alright?” he asked her.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she replied, gazing at him intently.

They held each other’s gaze for a while, neither saying a word until the silence was broken by Lister coughing.

 

“Oh er Cat, Lister, this is Samantha. Samantha this is Dave Lister, he’s the human I was telling you about.”

“Nice to meet you.” Lister said, giving her one of his hamster grins.

The Scouser was surprised to find that, despite Rimmer’s gushing about how ‘stunning’ she was, she was actually rather plain. Her eyes were a nice colour he supposed but nothing else about her appearance was particularly remarkable. She was certainly no Kochanski. But then, he was more than a little bias on that front.

‘He clearly sees something that I don’t.’

“And I’m the Cat!”, the feline took her free hand in his and kissed it in an overly dramatic gesture.

“Don’t worry baby, those butterflies will go away in a moment or two.”

“Ummm...thanks.” 

‘What an odd looking creature,” she thought to herself.

“So,” said Lister, “Rimmer said this hologram thing chained you up?”

“That’s right”, she confirmed.

“He hit you as well?” 

She suddenly remembered the bruise on her eye.

“He did more than hit her in the eye Lister, that monster battered her from head to foot!” said Rimmer.

“It was my fault,” said Samantha.  
“I fought him.”

“None of this is your fault,” said Rimmer, looking at her sternly. 

“You fought against a Hard-Light? Good on yer!”  
Lister found himself admiring her gutsiness.

There was no way in hell that her and Rimmer were ever going to be compatible on that front alone. 

He turned to the hologram and said,  
“Why haven’t you broken her out of here?”

“Because I can’t! That smeg for brains moron has reinforced everything!”

“So she’s stuck here?” asked Cat.

“For the time being yes,” Rimmer replied.

“Arnold?”

“What’s wrong?” The gentle tone that came out of his mouth was one that Lister hadn’t heard before.

“Will you come and sit down with me?”

Lister watched as the hologram sat down on the floor next to her and noticed the smile that broke across her face.

‘What on earth can she possibly see in the smeghead?’ he thought.

“How are you gonna get me out?” she asked the room in general.

The men looked at each other, neither of them had an answer.

Samantha had taken Rimmer’s hand in hers and Lister was curious to see how small her’s was against the hologram’s much larger one.

‘Small’ he thought, “Maybe just small enough.” 

This gave him an idea.

“Did you bring the first aid kit Kryten?”

“Yes sir, its over there in the corner.

Lister searched through the kit until he found what he was looking for. It appeared to be a tube of cream, the kind normally used on burns.

He approached Samantha and began to liberally apply it over her cuffed hand.

“What exactly is it that you are hoping to achieve there sir?” 

“Lister spoke as he massaged the cream in.  
“I got a piggy bank stuck on my hand when I was a kid, Kryten. This technique made it slide right off!”

“That’s not going to work Lister!” said Rimmer in his know-it-all tone of voice.

“Have you got any better ideas Rimmer?” 

Rimmer didn’t

“Once Lister was satisfied that he had applied enough cream, he began to slowly twist the cuff back and forth.

“Ow” said Samantha, as he accidentally pinched her skin.

“Be careful Lister, you’re hurting her you goit!”

“Smeg off Rimmer! I’m doing my bleedin best here!”

After a few more minutes of manipulation, the cuff slid straight off and Samantha threw her arms around Listers neck.

“Oh, thank you Dave, thank you so much!”

Rimmer bristled at this.  
He knew there was never going to be any chance of a relationship between him and her but seeing that open display of affection really hurt him.  
He wanted to be on the receiving end of that hug, more than anything in the world it seemed. He wanted to feel her soft, warm body against his. To breathe in the scent of her...”

His thoughts were interrupted by Lister’s voice.

“You’re more than welcome!” replied the Scouser, looking pleased as punch with himself.  
“I guess we’re all good to go now!  
How come you two didn’t think to do that?” he asked, looking at the both of them. 

“Well sir, we were otherwise engaged at the time. We were trying to sort out the young ladies foot.”

“What happened to her foot?”

“Kryten I’m warning you!” said Rimmer.

But Kryten really couldn’t help himself.

“Mr Rimmer trod on it.”

“What!” cried Lister with great amusement.  
“Oh Rimmer you really are a moron sometimes!” He said laughing.  
“That must have hurt like hell! Hard-lights are pretty heavy!”

 

“It was quite painful,” she said, and was going to mention the ceiling tile incident, until she saw the rage and humiliation on the hologram’s face and decided she couldn’t be that cruel. 

‘He gets embarrassed so easily,’ she thought.  
‘And it’s really quite adorable.’

Thankfully Kryten didn’t mention the ceiling tile either. He had planned to, until he noticed Rimmer looking at him with a face like thunder and decided that perhaps enough was enough for the time being.

“Come on guys,” said Lister.  
“Let’s get the smeg out of here!”

“Not so fast,” came a voice from behind them and they all turned to look at who had entered the room


	5. Chapter 5

“Not so fast,” came the voice from behind them and they all turned to look at who had entered the room.

A woman came sauntering into the room. Her long dark hair was clipped up at the back and she was wearing what looked to be a reasonably smart blouse and skirt, which seemed oddly out of place in the dank and dirty surroundings of the factory. Lister would have placed her somewhere in her forties but she was wearing such a thick application of make up that she could have in fact been older. The pungent smell of her perfume permeated the room, causing the cat to back right off from her as the stench hit his sensitive scent receptors.  
Samantha leapt to her feet and made to charge at the woman, completely forgetting about her bad foot.

“I’m gonna kill you, you fucking bitch!” she screamed before collapsing on the floor in a fit of agony. Rimmer grabbed her round the waist, pulled her back to rest against the wall and then sat down next to her.

“Thats her!” she cried,  
“She’s the one I saw with him!”

“Who broke you out?” demanded the woman angrily.

“I did,” replied Lister, staring at her intensely.

“Well, well, well,” said the woman walking up and down in front of the group of them, heels clicking noisily on the floor.  
“What in god’s name have we got here?”  
she sneered rhetorically.

“I see a mechanoid, some weird wolf-like creature...”

“Hey baby, I’m a cat! And don’t you forget it!”

“A humanoid,” she continued looking at Lister,  
“Oh and a hologram. Of the hard-light variety I assume?”

Rimmer didn’t respond, he only stared at her, a look of severe anxiety gracing his features

“Who’s in charge of its programming?”

“I am,” said Rimmer

“That’s not a particularly wise idea,” she said tutting.

“It’s my firm belief that these ‘things’,” she pointed at Rimmer, should be controlled. “It’s so much safer that way, and it also means that you can harness their power to the best possible use.”

She moved a little closer to Rimmer and Samantha, no doubt in order to scrutinise the hologram in more detail.

“It looks ex-human to me, even more reason to take away its control. Artificially generated thoughts and emotions with the powers that it’s imbued with, make for a very toxic combination don’t you think? How can you be sure it won’t turn on you?”

“He has a gender you dumb bitch!” shouted Samantha, again making an attempt to run at the woman, but Rimmer grabbed hold of her arm.

“You can’t walk remember!?” he spoke in her ear but Samantha still struggled against him.  
“I’ll scratch your fucking eyes out I will!” she screamed at the other woman.

“I don’t doubt it dear,” the woman shouted back to her. “It’s no wonder I couldn’t get a buyer for you!”

“A buyer?” Cat and Lister spoke simultaneously.

“Just who the smeg are you?” asked Lister.

“Ahh, I thought you’d never ask! My name is Claudia and I run this centre of operations.”

“And what exactly is this centre of operations Madam?” asked Kryten.

“It’s a sex slave ring, one of the largest and most successful on the planet as it happens.”

“You mean, you were gonna sell me to someone? To be someone’s slave?” squeaked Samantha.

“Sex slave,” she corrected. “What do you think happened to all the other women that were in here? They’ve all been sold off one by one, its a very lucrative business actually.”

“But the what about the moral implications Madam?” questioned Kryten.  
“Don’t you feel at all remorseful about the suffering you’ve caused.”

“Remorse doesn’t put food on the table my mechanical friend, Jupiter is facing hard times in the face of the current economic crisis.  
You have to earn money where you can.”

“You make me sick,” said Lister, glaring fiercely at her.

“Of course,” Claudia continued, completely ignoring him. “I’ve been having terrible problems with her!  
This pint-sized fire cracker has been most unpopular among the gentlemen folk.”

She began to make her way over to Rimmer and Samantha.

“Don’t you come near her!” warned the hologram, tightening his hand on Samantha’s arm. The vehemence in his voice surprised the other crew members a little.

“How sweet! It looks like you’ve got yourself a guard dog!  
But is it a match for mine I wonder?”

“Your guard dog’s offline! We made sure of that!” came Listers angry reply.

“You see, I really don’t think you did...”

She called out,

“Magnuson!”

Everyone focused their eyes on the door, as there framed in the doorway, was the black hologram  
He looked to be in complete working order.

 

“What the hell alphabet head, you said you had disabled him?!”

“I did!” Rimmer shouted back at Cat.

“Looks like someone’s programming isn’t quite as up to scratch as they thought hmm?” said Claudia fixing the hologram with a saccharine grin.  
“His technology is clearly more advanced than yours.”

“For god’s sake Rimmer!” cried Lister.  
“You’re supposed to know what you’re doing!?”

But Rimmer said nothing He was distracted in equal parts by the guilt of the mistake he’d made, and the terror that the monster in front was inflicting upon him.

‘You did this you complete and utter gimboid!’ he said to himself, ‘And now you’ve probably just killed your crew and the woman you’re in love with .

Old habits die hard and Rimmer’s cowardice very nearly got the better of him. He was having a great hardship fighting the urge to abandon the woman he was supposed to be protecting and run.

It was pure instinct, nothing more or less, and Rimmer’s instinct had always been to run. Not that he currently had anywhere to run to, as the huge black spectacle was blocking the door. Rimmer thought that his very appearance exuded evil, the big black pools of the monsters eyes seemed to see into the hologram’s artificial soul. 

‘It’s impossible to tell what he’s looking at!’ This thought caused him to shiver. 

 

The more he looked at the man framing the doorway, the more he felt his cowardice threatening to take over his body completely. 

“Got any bright ideas bud?” Cat said in Lister’s ear.

The Scouser shook his head.  
His mouth had gone dry and he knew full well that running off and hiding in a cupboard wouldn’t be an option this time.  
He raised his gun to Claudia.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” came the reply. “He’s programmed to protect me. If you shoot me, he’ll rip your head off. But please go ahead, if that’s the way you’d like to go.”

“What exactly is it that you want Madam?” said Kryten.

“I want you out of my factory!”

“That’s exactly what we were in the process of doing!” shouted Lister.

“Not with her,” she pointed at Samantha. “She stays.”

“Not happening,” said Rimmer.

“What could you possibly want with her anyway?” he said, trying exceptionally hard to disguise the tremor in his voice.

“Well as luck would have it I’ve finally found a buyer for her, and he’s willing to pay me a substantial sum.”

“No!” said Sam.

“Well I thought you’d be pleased as he’s very wealthy, you certainly won’t be sleeping on the floor anymore. He is an ex heavy weight champion I believe, so I hope you like it rough in the bedroom!” She ended the sentence with a maniacal laugh.

‘She’s completely insane,’ thought Rimmer.

 

“Don’t let her take me!” cried Sam, in tears now, “Please don’t let her take me!”

“She won’t,” said Rimmer, attempting to sound self assured even though he himself was cowering inside.

“Drop the girl and get out of here, I won’t stop you.”

“No!” Rimmer shouted back at her.

 

“Your choice,” replied the woman in front of them.

She clicked her fingers at her ‘hologrammatic guide dog’, obviously intending for it to do her evil bidding and wipe out the four of them.  
“Spare the girl,” she instructed.

Strangely enough however, Magnuson didn’t seem particularly intent on carrying out her orders. Instead he turned to face Claudia and stared at her for a long time.

“What are you doing?” she barked. “I ordered you to kill them!”

The other occupants in the room could only look on in complete terror as the hologram put his hands round her neck and strangled the life out of her in a matter of seconds. The sound of her choking filled the entirety of the small room.

 

“What was that she said about OUR goal-post head turning?“

“What made him do this Kryten?” asked a horrified Lister.

“I don’t think I could say for sure Mr Lister sir...It must have been a glitch somewhere in his programming, one that she wasn’t aware of!”

As Kryten spoke, the hologram in question stood up and began making tracks for Samantha. 

And it was at this point that Rimmer surprised everyone, himself especially, by getting up from his position by her side and moving to stand in front of her.

“Don’t you take one step closer, miladdo!” he said, his voice sounding a lot deeper than normal.

“Am I seeing this correctly?” asked Lister.

“I believe you are Mr Lister.” Kryten was one step away from popping his eyeballs out and giving them a polish.

“Is he gonna do what I think he’s gonna do?” asked Cat.

Rimmer had absolutely no idea how or why he was doing what he was doing. His instinct bellowed at him to run and hide behind the others. Either that or leg it out of the room and just keep on running until he got back to the Dwarf.

For perhaps the one and only time in his life and death though, he shoved his terror to one side.  
He thought of all the marks covering Samantha’s body. The bruises, the bites, the kicks and the scratches.  
The thought of the torture this monster in front had inflicted onto the beautiful woman currently huddled up in fear behind him combined to equal one emotional outcome.

Anger.

Anger was an emotion that Arnold J Rimmer was very familiar with, and right now that feeling was so intense he could feel it spreading throughout his entire brain, little by little drowning out the cowardice that usually occupied a very large portion of said organ.

The rage he felt towards the man in front of him, he realised, was equal to the love he felt for Samantha.

Magnuson slowly but surely closed the gap between them and Rimmer held out his arms in preparation to fend him off.

Everyone watched as the black hologram leaned in to strangle Rimmer. As luck would have it though, he didn’t get very far. He had been stopped short in his tracks by the good hologram’s hands upon his shoulders.

Everyone else in the room let out a collective sigh of relief they didn’t know they’d been holding.

“Nice one Rimmer!” Lister called out, still a little unsure about what he was seeing.  
“Now obliterate that smegger!”

 

Obliterating ‘the smegger’ though, it seemed, would not be so easy. 

It was certainly the case that Magnuson couldn’t move under Rimmer’s grip, despite his thrashing about, but he could restrict the other hologram’s movement. Rimmer felt a strong pair of hands come to rest on his own shoulders and found he couldn’t move a simulated muscle. The two of them began grappling furiously, At times spinning in circles at such an alarming speed that they appeared as nothing more than a dizzying swirl of blue and black. Just when it seemed that Rimmer might gain the upper hand, the evil hologram pushed back, and the same thing happened when the latter tried to take control.

“How long are they gonna be doing this for?” said Cat, “I’m getting motion sickness!”

“Unfortunately sir they are perfectly matched, in every way possible, and so they can’t attack each other!”

“It’s gotta end sometime hasn’t it Kryten? I mean they can’t just be doing this forevermore can they?” replied Lister

“It will be a case of whoever’s light-bee runs out first sir.”

‘Oh god Rimmer,’ thought Lister, ‘Please tell me you set off with a full charge this morning.’

He glanced round to check on Samantha and found her huddled up against the wall, her eyes as wide as saucers. He wanted to tell her everything would be ok, but wasn’t entirely sure that he could at this stage of the game.

But Rimmer, surprising his crew members for a second time, seemed to have formulated a plan.

“Distract him Lister!” he called out, still fully engaged in the hologrammatic waltz.

“You what?!”

“I said distract him!”

“How the smeg am I supposed to do that?!”

“Shoot him with the bazookoid! I’ll try and keep him from moving!”

“A rocket’s not gonna hurt him Rimmer! He’s invincible!”

 

“Yes I’m fully away of that, thank you Lister but will you get on and do what I’ve asked! I can’t hold him still for long!”

Lister picked up his bazookoid and moved into position behind Magnuson, who was temporarily an unmoving target thanks to Rimmer’s intervention.

He fired directly at the evil hologram’s back and was aware of Samantha squeaking in shock at the noise. He glanced over and saw that she now had her hands clapped over her ears.

Magnuson, although unable to feel pain, responded to the gun shot just as Rimmer had hoped he would. Removing his hands from the blue hologram’s shoulders he swivelled round to see what had fired at him. 

This gave Rimmer the perfect opportunity.

Now he was no longer having to expel power defending himself, he could put it to a much better use. He summoned up every ounce of hard-light strength contained in his body and channeled it into his right hand, which he then used to force his way into Magnuson’s back.

“What in the name of...?” said Cat mystified.

“How in the smeg is he doing that?” asked Lister, watching as Rimmer’s hand moved steadily towards the bee.  
“I thought hard-light bodies were impenetrable!”

Magnuson had completely frozen, he seemed to be in some sort of glitch which had in no doubt been set off by Rimmer’s hand infiltrating his body.

“He’s pushing the boundaries of his programming!” “Mr Rimmer, you need to stop this now! You are doing yourself irreparable damage!” Kryten ranted.

But Rimmer ignored him, he was so close now. He could feel the heat rising off the other man’s bee, he could feel the pulsations. With one final push he closed his fingers around the metal device and yanked with all his might, managing to successfully pull the mechanical heart completely out of the other hologram’s body.

Upon having his light-bee forcibly removed, Magnuson instantly disintegrated into tiny particles of light, which then flowed into the metal device currently sitting in Rimmer’s hand. 

Throwing it to the ground, the hologram stamped the living daylights out of it until it was nothing more than a crumpled up pile of metal.

“Oh...My...God Rimmer!” Lister’s grin looked as if it would split his face in two.

The hologram looked up to see everyone in the room looking staring at him.

‘I haven’t seen that look since I was Ace,” he thought.

Lister and Samantha both wore facial expressions of complete awe and even the look on Cat’s face could almost have been one of admiration.

Kryten was the only one in the room not smiling. In fact, his current mood reflected quite the opposite of happy. 

“Well Rimmer,” said Lister, “I suppose I better take back what I said about...Rimmer? Rimmer man what’s wrong?”

The hologram’s face had suddenly screwed up in an intense grimace and he backed unsteadily up to the wall behind him, barely noticing Samantha crying out his name.

The pain was unbearable. It felt like a thousand knives were jabbing into every part of him, and the feeling was rapidly getting worse. 

‘Oh my god what have I done to myself?’  
he began to groan.

“Kryten! He looks like he’s in pain! How is that possible?!” cried Lister.

“I knew it!” screeched the mechanoid. “I knew this would happen, but he wouldn’t listen to me!”

“Fix him Kryten!,” screamed Samantha from behind him.

“No one ever listens to me round here do they?! I distinctly told Mr Rimmer that he needed to stop what he was doing!”

“Kryten...” began Lister.

“But oh no! A mere sanitation droid cannot possibly give orders to a high and mighty second technician can he?!” 

For the first time since Lister had known Kryten, he completely lost his temper with the mechanoid.

“He saved us Kryten! He saved us from that monster! He basically laid down his smeggin life for us. That’s what you’ve been telling him to do for years on end isn’t it? Now, you go over there and you fix him!”.

Kryten stopped instantly and shook his head, as if trying to gather himself. 

“I do apologise for that sir, my sanity chip seems to have gone a bit haywire.” 

Looking a little sheepish, Kryten made his way over to Rimmer.

The hologram’s projection had begun to flicker fiercely, switching between black and white and colour. Lister could have sworn he could see beads of sweat on the man’s forehead.

‘How can holograms sweat?’

The pain was now so intense that Rimmer’s vision began to swim and he was seriously struggling to hold himself up against the wall.

Krtyen approached him and said  
“Sir, I need you to focus now.” He grabbed hold of Rimmer’s arms for emphasis.

“Ow Krtyen that hurts,” wailed the hologram.

Kryten’s touch on his arms had triggered an agonising wave of hurt to spread up his arms and round to the rest of his body. Now he had a burning sensation to cope with as well as the stabbing pains. The severe pain he was in caused him to forget his strength and he shoved Kryten hard, sending the mechanoid sprawling across the room to smack into the opposite wall.

“Kryten man, are you ok?” said Lister running over to him.

“Yes I’m fine sir, he’s clearly not in control of himself, which means things are a lot worse than I thought,” he said rubbing his elbow and adjusting his head.

Luckily the Scouser was just quick enough to catch Samantha on her hands and knees making a beeline for Rimmer. He caught her under her armpits and pulled her back.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked angrily at him. 

“He’s unpredictable right now Sam! It’s not safe!”  
Lister knew that the odds of the woman in his arms surviving being flung against a wall were slim to none.

“But he needs help!”

“Kryten’s gonna fix him, ok?”

The mechanoid once again approached Rimmer, this time ensuring he didn’t make physical contact anywhere on the hologram’s body.

“Help me Kryten...Please help me,” Rimmer begged, his voice sounding worryingly faint.

“You need to off-line sir.”

“Can’t”...mumbled the failing the technology in front of him.  
“Hurts too much.”

He had tried repeatedly to force an offline but every time he had tried, the pain had built up to such a nauseating crescendo that he’d had to stop.

“Its the only way we can begin to fix you sir.”

“Soft,” he gasped, and Kryten knew exactly what he was referring to.

In amidst the flickering, Samantha saw her hero’s outfit transform from blue to red. She glanced round at Lister who nodded in reassurance.

Once the transition had been made, Kryten reached inside Rimmer’s chest and retrieved the failing light-bee.

“What have you done to him?” cried Samantha.

 

“Its ok Sam we’re gonna take him back to the ship, Kryten will be able to repair him there,” said Lister.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that buds! Nostril City ain’t lookin so good!”

“He’s gonna be fine,” Lister said through gritted teeth, nudging the feline sharply in the ribs.

“Ow, dial down on the aggression monkey boy!”

Ignoring him Lister spoke quietly in Kryten’s ear.

“You can fix this right?”

“I honestly don’t know sir.”

The look on Kryten’s face worried him greatly.

“Right lets get out of here!” Lister gathered Samantha up in his arms.

“He’s not gonna die is he Dave?” Her voice was trembling. “Holograms can’t die can they?” 

“He’s not gonna die.” said Lister, although he wasn’t sure that he truly believed that at this moment in time.  
He had never known Rimmer to malfunction this badly before, and the amount of smoke and electrical sparks coming off the man’s light-bee were far from reassuring.

 

Kryten worked all through the night to fix Rimmer and, after having a quick shower and changing into some proper clothes that Lister had found for her, Samatha stayed by the hologram’s side.  
Kryten had attempted to persuade her to go and get some rest but she was adamant that she wouldn’t leave, becoming quite snippy with him when he forced the matter and so he had given up in the end.

She looked at the freaky little metal device sat on the counter, which currently had about a dozen wires plugged into it, and wondered if she’d ever see her tall, dark blue stranger again.

“Did you call your parents?” asked Lister, popping in to the medibay to bring her a sandwich and a set of crutches.

“Yes,” she said, “Turns out they weren’t actually that concerned.”

‘What?” But you were gone for over a month!”

“Well, put it this way, it’s not the first time I’ve done a disappearing act on them. I...well...I like to drink.”

“I’m right with you there,” said Lister smiling.

“Yeah I drink a little too much though,” she said, embarrassed by her confession.  
“Turns out they thought I’d just gone on another booze bender.”

“Did you tell them what really happened?”

She shook her head and picked up her sandwich.  
“I could’nt, I just couldn’t.... I’ll tell them when I get home”.  
What’s the plan about getting me home?”

“We can go whenever you, want” said Lister, “We’ll take Starbug.”

“What’s Starbug?”

“It’s the smaller vessel we normally use for exploring derelicts.” 

“Ok, well, we’ll wait for Arnold to come round and then set off?”

Kryten spoke up.

“Unfortunately Miss, even if all goes well, Mr Rimmer wont’t be able to leave Red Dwarf for another two or three days at least.  
He will be extremely fatigued and so will need to run from his holo-suite as well as his light-bee until he is fully recovered.

“So he can’t come with us?”

“Not for a few days Miss, no.”

“Then I’ll wait,” she said.

“What about your parents, Sam?” said Lister.

“Another few days isn’t gonna hurt them is it? They didn’t even bloody care that I was missing in the first place did they?”

“Besides, Arnold needs me,” she said eyeing up the light-bee again. She was curious to know exactly how her hero had died, but it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. She also had a strange feeling that the answer might upset her, not that that made any sense at all. 

 

Lister noticed her wary glance.

“You got many holograms on Jupiter?’

“A fair few yes, but they’re all a bit see through and they can’t touch anything. Magnuson was the first solid one I’d come across.”

“This far into the future and there’s still soft-light holograms wandering about?” said Lister unbelievingly.

“Well yes sir, you see hard-light projection is still somewhat of a cutting edge technology on certain planets. Then of course there is the problem of having enough power to sustain them in the first place.”

Lister nodded in agreement.

“We’re not far off needing a bleedin power station to keep that smeghead running.”

“But Arnold looks so real, he feels so real, how can it all just be created from light?”

“Well that there Miss is a fascinating topic of conversation!  
Would you like me to explain the laws of Holographic Science to you?”

“No that’s ok,” she replied pulling an unenthusiastic face at Lister, to which he responded with a grin.

The three sat in silence for a while, the only sound being Kryten pulling switches and typing on keyboards.

Eventually Sam said,

“You know, I’ve never been on a spaceship before,” she said, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Her sleepless night was clearly catching up with her.

“No?” said Lister.

“It’s pretty awesome,” she said casting her eye around the medibay, as if the room were more akin to a decorative art gallery rather than the stark medical unit it was.

‘Not as cool as you might think,’ thought Lister.

Several hours later Lister headed off to get some sleep, leaving just Kryten and Samantha. The latter had fallen asleep on her arm, which was resting on the bed.

She was woken by a gentle voice in her ear.

“Sorry to wake you Miss, but I’m about to boot him up.”

She slowly came to, stretching her arms out and blinking a few times in an attempt to shake off the sleepy feeling that enveloped her.

“This part always feels a bit strange,” Kryten warned her as he turned on the power switch.

And Kryten hadn’t been joking. There was a bizarre whooshing sensation that seemed to spread throughout the room and then it felt like the air was positively charged. The lights flared momentarily and she felt all the hairs on her body stand up.  
There was also a peculiar tingling sensation in her nose which caused her to sneeze. 

Lister, no doubt responding to the power surge, appeared in the doorway.

“You launching him Krytes?”

“Yes sir.”

What happened next was quite possibly the most beautiful spectacle that Samantha had ever seen in her life.

Particles of sparkling light began flowing out of the device in front of her and swirling around in the air until they gradually began to form the man that she cared so much for.  
As his head was forming she noticed how his H shone brightly, the blue colour so much more vibrant than usual. In fact the contrast of his image in general was breathtaking. The colour of his eyes and hair momentarily flared up to intense shades. She watched as the rest of his body began to unfold in full high definition colour, before settling down to its usual brightness and contrast.

“Wow,” she breathed.

Lister smiled at her reaction. He and the other two crew members had witnessed this so many times over the years that they had become rather complacent about it, so it was always fun seeing a newbies reaction.

“Is he going to be ok?” she asked him, completely unable to drag her eyes away from the scientific magic taking place in front of her. 

Eventually the full form of the hologram was standing in front of them.

Everything except for his legs.

“For smeg’s sake Kryten!” he growled, noticing the absence of his lower limbs.

“Yeah, he’s gonna be fine,” replied Lister.

“Ah sir, I was worried that might be the case. The programming for your legs seems to have taken the most damage, I can always try...”

“Oh get out of the way Kryten, I’ll do it myself!” he shoved the mechanoid, none too gently, out of the way and began working on fixing himself.

“Well, we know for sure that his personality drive is working ok,” said Lister.

 

Rimmer repaired himself in a matter of minutes, although he wore an intense frown.

“My legs don’t feel right Kryten.”

“No sir, as I explained a moment ago, they have taken the most damage and it will take some time for them to reconfigure themselves. Don’t forget that I have just brought you back from the brink of obliteration and so it’s very important that you rest... Now I suggest you lie down on the bed.”

Rimmer did as asked.

“Everything aches!”

“I know sir, I’m afraid that’s the side effect of the harm you did to yourself, it should clear up in a couple of days or so and then your software will be back to full working order.”

“Thank god for that!” he replied, rolling his shoulders and wincing at the pain the movement caused.

“Are you alright?” he said to Samantha.

“I think it should be me asking you that question,” she replied

“I’m ok,” he said, although this was somewhat of a lie as he was actually feeling pretty rough. The only thing he could liken it to was the vicious spell of flu he’d had when he was eighteen.

Lister spoke up.

“Thanks by the way.”

“For what?” the hologram replied.

“For saving us you smeghed!”

“I really saved you?” he sounded completely mystified. 

“Yeah you did,” said Lister beaming at him.

“I suppose I did...” was the hologram’s only response.

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” said Samantha, taking Rimmer’s hand and fixing him with one of her breathtaking smiles, the one that he had grown so fond of. She then turned and looked profoundly at Lister.

“Ok,” he said, taking the hint.  
“Come on Krytes, lets give them some space. Didn’t you say you had some configurations to run in the suite?

“Indeed I do sir,” he was almost at the door when he turned back to say “Make sure you stay here and rest Mr Rimmer!”

“Don’t worry I’ll make sure he does,” replied Samantha.

“Have you been here all night?” Rimmer asked her in a concerned tone of voice when the other two had left.

She nodded.

“You must be exhausted,” he said, frowning that adorable frown at her.  
“Make sure they put you in the Captain’s Quarters, and you can tell them that’s an order from me!” 

“I was so worried about you,” she said moving closer to him

“Please tell me you’ve eaten something?!” he said, “Please don’t tell me that Kryten stood there and let you go hungry when...”

Rimmer suddenly found himself on the receiving end of a hug.

It was just as he had imagined it would be when he had been shamelessly daydreaming about it yesterday, watching her hug Lister.

After the initial shock he put his arms around her and hugged her back, enjoying immensely the soft curves of her body, and he couldn’t help the simulated goosebumps he felt when she whispered in his ear,

“Thank you for saving me.”

She pulled back and looked into his face, so close that they were now nose to nose. Her beautiful eyes and enticing lips inches away from his face were far too much to bear, and Arnold Rimmer found himself doing something that he really hadn’t planned on doing. 

He kissed her.

Her lips were as soft as they looked and he was overjoyed to discover that she seemed to be kissing him back, which caused him to up the ante a little.

Samantha found herself getting lost in the kiss. It was loving and tender, and caused pleasant tingling sensations throughout her body.

Until...

Until a tongue slipped into her mouth, which set off the panic alarms in her brain.

‘Steve,’ she thought, and could feel that horrible man’s tongue being forced down her throat.

She abruptly pulled away from Rimmer, looking at him like a rabbit caught in the headlights and realisation came crashing down in the hologram’s mind.

“Oh god, I’ve completely misread this haven’t I? You don’t even like me in that way do you?!” I shouldn’t have done that! I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine,” she mumbled, “I just, I’m not feeling well...I need to go and lie down.” she said, exiting the room as quickly as her crutches would allow.

“No Sam, please wait!” he called out, calling her by her shortened form for the first time. He lunged off the bed and made to go after her but his legs buckled underneath him and he collapsed to the floor, smacking the corner of his head on a shelf as he went down.

The shelf shattered and bits of wood and metal came down on top of him, along with the vase of flowers that had been on it, which also smashed as it came down on his head.

The pain hit him more or less instantly, in the form of a sharp throb that radiated throughout the whole of his head.

“Shit,” he hissed, cradling his head in his hands.

He struggled to get up but his legs weren’t functioning at all.

He didn’t have the energy to shout and so resolved that he would be stuck here on the floor rolling around in agony until someone came in to check on him.

Thankfully Lister popped his head round the door not soon after. “What’s all that noise?!”

The scouser tried hard not to laugh, but failed rather spectacularly.

Seeing the hologram in a collapsed heap on the floor, covered in broken bits of the shelf and vase was funny enough. But seeing his head and shoulders drenched in water and covered in pink carnations made the situation downright hilarious.

That was until he noticed how much pain the other man was in.

“Rimmer man, let me see.”  
He reached over and removed the hand that was protectively covering the supposedly injured part of the holograms head.

“Your fine Rimmer there’s not even a scratch, your invincibility drive is working fine.”

“Oh well that’s bloody alright then isn’t it!” Rimmer spat back, picking bits of broken glass and flowers off his tunic.

“Aright, alright, don’t go getting snappy with me! Just cos you decided to go ten rounds with a shelf!”

“Look Lister, I’m in a somewhat incredible amount of agony here, so please forgive my current lack of hospitality.” 

And it was true. The terrible aches he was feeling up and down his limbs had now been joined by the searing pain in his head.  
“Can you help me up? I can’t feel my legs!”

“No way man, last time I tried to help you up I put my back out for three weeks!”

“You can’t just leave me here on the floor!”

“Hang on, I’ll get Kryten,” said Lister heading out the door.

Rimmer wanted to die.

It seemed a very cruel trick of Mother Nature, or perhaps more accurately Holographic science, to deprive him of pain for twenty odd years or so and then inflict a whole load of it at once.  
He closed his eyes and tried mentally to fend it off as best he could, he was on the verge of controlling it a little better when he suddenly heard

“Woah! Alphabet head down!”

‘Oh god not him, please! Anyone but him!’

“Hey bud, you’re looking a little under the weather there!” said Cat, before pulling out a nail file and touching up his claws. 

“Oh and by the way, pink is definitely not you’re colour!” the feline said, gesturing at the carnations.

“I’m real good at my colour coordination, as you probably know by now, how bout I fetch my fabric swatches and we can design a whole new outfit for you!  
You know dark blue is so last season, I was thinking maybe white? Or a tan brown colour perhaps...”

“Please stop talking,” moaned Rimmer, hands over his eyes.

Thankfully Lister and Krtyen appeared at that point.

“Mr Rimmer, what are you doing on the floor? I told you you needed your rest!  
And what have you done to my favourite vase!? Is this the thanks I get for saving your life!”

It was an accident Krytes, I think he fell of the bed,” said Lister.

 

“Are you in pain sir?” questioned the mechanoid.

“Yes, a good smegging deal of it!”

“Which is exactly why I told you to rest sir! You can’t expect such a quick recovery after the amount of damage you did to yourself!”

“Alright Kryten spare me the lecture! Can you help me up?”

“I can sir, but you’ll have to help me,” replied the mechanoid, placing his arms under Rimmer’s armpits.”

 

“If you can just get my upper body onto the bed I can pull myself up.”

Sure enough once Kryten had managed to get Rimmer’s arms onto the bed, the hologram was able to lift himself the rest of the way. He then collapsed on his front with his eyes closed, a picture of exhaustion.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Well!” shrieked Kryten, “I suppose I’ll have to go and find something to clear up this mess!” He made to leave but then turned back to them and said,

“This is why I can’t have nice things!” 

Once the mechanoid had stormed out of the room, Lister turned his attention to the man on the bed.

“Rimmer, how did you fall off here in the first place?” 

“I was trying to go after Sam,” groaned the hologram.

Lister pinched the bridge of his nose.  
“What did you do Rimmer?”

“I may have tried to kiss her,” came the exhausted voice from the bed.

“You what!? Rimmer what the smeg happened to ‘Not acting on your feelings’?”

“I got carried away,” said the other man, his face wracked with guilt.  
“She’ll never speak to me again will she?”

“Don’t take it too hard non-bud,” said Cat, sitting down next to Rimmer on the bed. “You just gotta understand how the female mind works.”

“And what do you know about the female mind?” he said, glaring at the feline.

“Hey, I’m a sensitive guy! I pick up on these things!  
You see right now, she’s gonna be on the lookout for a bathroom, pretty damn quick mind you!”

“What’s she gonna want a bathroom for?” asked Lister, arms folded across his chest.

“To throw up in of course! Having this dudes tongue in her mouth? Well that’s gotta be just about the worst thing a woman would ever have to go through!”  
She’s gonna be wanting to bleach her entire mouth out!”

“I swear on Io, if you do not get out of this room right now!” shouted Rimmer, making to get off the bed.”

Lister grabbed him by the shoulder.

“You’re supposed to be resting Rimmer! Do I have to go and get Kryten?!”

“God no, I can’t take another lecture from Bog Bot!”

“Well do as you’re smegging told then!  
Cat I think you should...”

“Don’t you worry monkey I’m going! Some people are just so dam rude! I give him some of my fashion expertise! I give him relationship advice! And what do I get in return? Threats of violence!”  
He flounced out of the room.

“I’ve messed up Lister! Why do I always mess up?” said the hologram sitting up on the bed.

“I don’t know Rimmer, but you seem to have a talent for it,” said the Scouser rolling his eyes.

“All this was so easy when I was Ace!  
“Do you know how many women I slept with when I was that tin foil space hero?”

“No Rimmer, and it’s not something I desperately want to know either.”

“Dozens Lister! Dozens!”

“All right Rimmer! No one likes a bragger!”

“But thats just it Lister, I’m not bragging!” cried Rimmer in desperation.  
“That was when I went off to be Ace! It wasn’t ME!

“Rimmer, you WERE Ace! Well...one of them at least...”

“Ace Rimmer had women literally falling at his feet. All Arnold Rimmer does is scare them off!”

“Well maybe Arnold Rimmer wouldn’t scare them off if he didn’t jump into things headfirst?!” replied Lister.

A moment of silence passed between them.

 

“How do I fix this Lister?” Rimmer looked at the scouser with a face that the younger man always hated to see.  
It was like looking at a ten year old boy who’d just got in trouble with his parents.

“I honestly don’t know Rimmer, but I’d suggest putting some distance between the two of you, for a couple of days at least. Anyway I need to go and grab some breakfast.  
“Stay on the bed!” he said, shaking his finger at the hologram as he left.

Rimmer felt tired, desperately tired and it wasn’t long before his lethargy took him over completely and he disappeared inside his light-bee for a nap, only coming out when he heard the sound of broken glass being swept up. 

 

“I’m sorry Mr Rimmer, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“That’s alright Kryten.”

“How are you feeling now sir?”

“Like I’ve been run over by a freight train.”

“Ah well, that is to be expected.”

“I’ve done something really stupid Kryten.”

“Don’t worry too much about it sir, I’m sure I’ll be able to find another one.”

“I’m not talking about your smegging vase Kryten! I’m talking about kissing Sam!”

“ I heard sir.”

“How did I misread the signs?!?” groaned Rimmer.

“What signs were those sir?”

“She hugged me...in a romantic sort of way.”  
Seeing the confused look on the mechanoid’s face he added,  
“Not in the way that I would hug Lister!”

“Well sir, I don’t claim to be any expert on human behaviour, but have you considered the possibility that this woman might have a kind of ‘hero syndrome’ for want of a better term?”

“What on Io is a hero syndrome?” questioned Rimmer, watching the mechanoid meticulously sweeping up every last shard of glass.

“Well, you did save her life, therefore she now sees you as someone who took her away from a very bad situation.”

“What exactly is it that you’re getting at Krtyen?”

“I’m simply trying to say sir that it’s possible that she only likes you on a superficial level, which means that any feelings she may currently have for you will fade away in a day or so.

“Thank you Kryten, you’ve made me feel so much better about things!”

“Sir, I’m merely trying to prevent you from putting to much stock into this relationship. I’m trying to spare your feelings”

“I understand your point Kryten but there is just one flaw. You saved MY life, but I’m not exactly throwing my arms around your neck am I?”

“Well, no sir but she’s a lot younger than you or I, which means that she would be more naive, more impressionable if you like.  
On top of that you are a man and she is a woman. She is the classic damsel in distress and you are her knight in shining armour sir.” 

Rimmer sighed, there was no escaping Kryten’s logic.

“I’ve made a complete idiot of myself haven’t I?”

“Well you could always tell her that you weren’t feeling yourself sir. An experience that you’ve just been through could cause anyone to act a bit off kilter!”

Kryten’s idea was a good one, but Rimmer didn’t want to lie to her...He’d kissed her because it was something that he had wholeheartedly wanted to do. There had been no confusion about it, he had known exactly what he was doing. 

Unfortunately, he had just been completely powerless to stop it. 

And yet, he could have sworn that she had kissed him back...At least to begin with.

Nevertheless, the mechanoid’s advice had provided some clarification on the matter.

“Kryten?”

“Yes sir,” he said, looking up at the hologram.

“Thank you for fixing me.”

Kryten almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The tone of voice was so kind, so sincere, that he was having trouble believing it was coming from the man in front of him.

 

“You are more than welcome sir,” he smiled. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some down time to catch up on. Please get some rest.”

Rimmer watched him leave and found himself alone with his thoughts. The more he thought about what had happened, the more he felt like the most selfish person in the universe.  
He attempted to justify to himself what had happened. Being deprived of physical affection for years on end was bound to cause you to act a little irrationally, especially when in the company of a beautiful woman. In the same sense that you couldn’t lay out a banquet for a starving man and not expect him to at least sample the hors d’oeuvres

But he knew very well that his justifications were in vain. 

 

‘You didn’t take her feelings into account at all did you?  
You just acted on your own perverted desires.’

 

The feel of her body against his had been wonderful but he knew he’d never experience being that close to her again, not after what he’d done. 

‘I need to see you Samantha, I need to speak to you! I need to apologise for the terrible thing that I’ve done. And I would if I could get off this smegging bed! But Listers probably right, I should give you some space.

I know you could never be interested in me, never in a million years. 

I’m old enough to be your father.

How am I going to fix this?’

Rimmer put his fist in his mouth.


	6. Chapter 6

Samantha woke up later that day in the Captain’s Quarters.  
Kryten had carried out Rimmer’s orders and prepared the room for her. 

Upon waking she found herself face to face with something terrifying; some weird sort of robotic dog had found its way into her bedroom.

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you?!” she shrieked at it, backing up so far in the bed that she almost ended up falling out the other side of it.

It had weird claw things on it’s head, and in one of those claws hung a plastic bag. The strange invention appeared to be twisting it’s head round in an inquisitive manner.

“Is that, is that for me?” she asked, tentatively leaning towards the bag.

The mechanical creature spun its head round again and, taking that to be an affirmative, she leant forward and grasped it.

The bag was full of feminine hygiene products, along with a note that said:

‘Hope these will be ok for you.  
Sorry for this morning

‘A’

She surmised that he still wasn’t well enough to get off the bed, and hadn’t wanted to let on to the others about her current ‘predicament,’ so had sent this mechanical dog off to get what she needed.

It was such a sweet thing to do.

She cast her mind back to the events of the morning and was distraught at how what had started as such a nice kiss could have turned into something so awkward and uncomfortable.  
The tongue in her mouth had taken her right back to last Christmas.

‘I wonder if I’ll ever get that horrible man out of my head,” she wondered sadly.

The mechanical dog was still looking at her, almost as if it was expecting something in return for the errand it had run.

“Um...thanks for that mate,” she said, patting it on the head.

The creature spun its head round a few more times and then scuttled off out the door and down the corridor.

Right now, the only thing she wanted to do was avoid Arnold J Rimmer. At least until most of the awkwardness had gone away, and so she spent the day hanging out with the others, which also gave her the opportunity to meet the ship’s computer Holly.  
She stayed well away from the medibay and thankfully none of the others questioned her about her complete avoidance of the hologram. They all knew the kiss was a bit of a ‘third rail’ topic.

Rimmer though, seemed to be eager to clear the air with her.

The morning after, she found him waiting for her in the corridor outside her bedroom; he looked to be fully functioning again. This was the first time that they had been stood up next to each other. He seemed remarkably tall, compared to her tiny five foot frame. 

‘What a ridiculous looking couple we would make,” she thought absent mindedly.

“My word you’re tiny,” he said looking down at her.  
It was in an affectionate tone though rather than a mocking one. He looked her up and down almost as if she were some kind of strange and precious metal. She coughed pointedly.

“Oh yes,” he said, coming back to himself, “Did you get the bag I sent?” he asked.

“Yeah I did thanks,” she replied, heading back into her room

“I’m really sorry for the other day...”

“Look Arnold I’ve got a bad headache, I need to go and lie down.”

“But you’ve just come out of your room!”

She shut the door in his face.

It was such an awful thing to have done, especially after he had been so thoughtful, but those terrible trust issues were rearing their ugly heads again, and the kiss hadn’t helped matters.  
It had started a spiral of behavioural thinking that she just didn’t seem to be able to get on top of.

‘What if he tries to do it again?’

She waited at the door anxiously, until she heard his footsteps move away.

‘Hopefully he’s got the message.’

 

But a few hours later she met him in the kitchen. She was struggling to reach a tin of tuna on the top shelf, when she suddenly felt a presence behind her.

“I’ll get that for you,” 

It was him again.

He picked up the can and passed it down to her, his body close enough to hers that she was aware of the intense heat coming off him. He hadn’t been half that warm when she’d hugged him yesterday. Maybe it was because he had still been a bit broken, she reasoned.

‘He’s like a radiator.’

 

She hoped he would leave but he didn’t, he just stood there looking like he was trying desperately hard to think of something to say.

So she had to leave.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she lied, and went and hid in there for about twenty minutes, feeling like some naughty schoolgirl hiding from a teacher.  
By the time she returned to the kitchen, he’d gone.  
A tuna sandwich was sitting on the counter, along with a glass of orange juice and a note that simply read.

‘Really sorry for yesterday.’

‘A’

She felt like such a bitch.

And never more so than that evening when she came out of her en-suite bathroom to discover a hot chocolate on her beside table, piled high with whipped cream and marshmallows. Upon closer inspection she noticed that it had crumbled up flake bar on top of it.

There was a note beside it.

‘Haven’t made hot chocolate for about 25 years, so I hope this is ok.’  
‘A’

‘P.s I’m sorry again.’

She took a sip of the hot chocolate and was surprised at how good it tasted for someone who supposedly hadn’t made one for a quarter of a century.

She wrestled with the thought of going and finding him to say thank you, but still didn’t feel comfortable about facing him.

Just as she was about to get into bed there was a knock at the door. She almost didn’t answer it, but he knew she was in there, and something told her he wouldn’t stop knocking until he got an answer, so desperate he seemed to be to speak to her. 

His eyes, normally a bright shining hazel, looked fatigued, in a way that she didnt think was possible for a hologram. In actual fact he looked exhausted, which puzzled her just as much.

Exhausted?

Fed up more likely.

‘Fed up with you being a complete bitch no doubt.’

He was holding some blankets.

“There’s a blizzard starting up outside, it’s going to be cold so I thought you might want some extra blankets.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking them from him.

There was an awkward silence.

“Look Arnold I...”

“I know,” he said, as if he had been expecting this response.

“You have a headache, or you need to go to the bathroom,” he said, the sadness in his eyes was more than she could bear.

“I just didn’t want you to be cold.”

And with that, he walked off down the corridor, leaving her clutching the extra blankets and struggling to fight the tears forming.

 

The next day she found Dave in the bunk room, enjoying a pungent smelling curry and a can of beer. 

She wandered tentatively in and knocked on the open door.

“Alright Sam?” he said when he saw her.

“Is Arnold around?”

“No,” said Lister through a mouthful of curry, haven’t seen him at all today.”

“Oh thank god!” she said.

 

She came in and sat down at the table with him, only showing a slight limp when she walked.

“Please tell me you’ve got a spare one of those knocking about the place?” she asked, nodding her head towards his can of beer.

“Sure,” he replied and grabbed one out of the fridge for her.

“Still avoiding him?” he asked, passing the can to her.

“I’m trying to but he seems to be everywhere I turn.”

“Yeah that’s Rimmer! He can be incredibly determined when it comes to something he wants.” 

‘That thing he wants is me isn’t it?”

“More than you know.  
Look I don’t want to be interfering or anything, but if you don’t like the guy then you really need to put him out of his misery.”

“But that’s just it Dave, I do like him... It’s just complicated,” she took a swig of beer.

Lister’s expression spoke of much confusion.

“You like him? I mean, you know, really like him?!”

“I think so.”

“You know, it would really make his year if you went and told him that.  
Why haven’t you?’

“It sounds silly but I’m a bit worried that he might try and do it again.”

“What, kiss you? Nah your safe there, Rimmer might be a bonehead but he’d never make the same mistake twice. He knows how much it upset you.”

“For sure?”

“I’ve known the man for years Sam, it’s my reckoning he’s been scared off kissing you for life, unless you were to make the first move of course.”

She felt relieved at that, she believed Lister...after all as Lister had said they had known each other a pretty long time

“I’ve got to ask Sam, what is it exactly that attracted you to him in the first place?”

“It’s gonna sound wacko Dave, but I saw something in his eyes.”

“Go on,” said Dave, more than curious to discover where this thread of conversation was going.

“When I looked into his face, it felt almost as if I’d known him all my life. It was a lot more than just good looks.”

 

Lister nearly spat out a mouthful of curry at this.  
“You think Rimmer’s good looking?!”

“Yes,” she replied, in a tone that suggested she didn’t see how this was so hard to believe.

“Well you need to tell him that if nothing else, he’s debating reversing his ageing process.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, his ageing effect is superficial; Holly, the ships computer set it up so I wouldn’t feel so bad getting older on my own and he’s never really had a reason to turn it off before. Now he’s trying to work out how to roll back to his thirties.

“Why would he do that?!”

“He thinks it will make you like him more, although he started moaning at me earlier on that he didn’t really like how he looked then either so I told him to put a paper bag over his head. Apparently, that wasn’t a helpful suggestion.

“Why does he have such little self-confidence about the way he looks?”

At which point Cat swung into the room,

“Hey have anyone of you lot seen black hole nostrils? He’s taken my string game! I know he has!”

“That’s probably one reason,” said Lister smiling at her.

“No we haven’t Cat now smeg off will ya.”

“I swear I’m gonna find that string...” grumbled the cat as he left the room.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit mean to be making fun of his nostrils like that?”

“Oh, he’s used to it by now! He finds it funny too!”

But Sam wasn’t overly convinced about that. 

“He also had a major shitty childhood,” continued Lister,  
“But you didn’t hear that from me. I guess he’ll tell you about it himself when he’s good and ready.”

This surprised Sam. She had been so wrapped up in all her crap that she hadn’t even considered the fact that the man she had been trying to avoid all the morning may have also been through a traumatic time.

Lister polished off the last of his curry and began rolling a fag.

 

“Smoke?” he asked her.

“Oh god, yes,” she cried.

He lit one and gave it to her.  
She inhaled the smoke deeply, throwing her head back in enjoyment; she wasn’t sure what she had missed more, the booze or the fags.

“I’ll warn you now,” said Lister, lighting his own cigarette,  
“Rimmer hates smoking.”

He smiled when her noticed her concerned expression.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve got mouthwash, body spray and air freshener.

It pays to always be prepared, otherwise I get a lecture every five bleedin minutes!” he chuckled.

Sam laughed too, deciding that she liked Dave a lot, despite his serious lack of personal hygiene.

‘When did he last take a shower?’ she thought

At any rate he had a very kind smile and he made her feel relaxed. It was nice to have someone easygoing to chat to, who also seemed to have a plentiful supply of booze and fags

Someone who hadn’t scared the shit out of her by kissing her.

‘He doesn’t give you butterflies in your stomach though does he Sam?’

“Can I ask you something Dave?”

“Of course,” he said ejecting a plume of smoke from his nostrils.

“What happened here? This ship was clearly built for more than four people.”

 

“There was a radiation leak and all the crew were wiped out.” 

 

“Is that how Arnold died?”

He nodded, choosing not to tell her that the object of her affection had in fact been the cause of the disaster.

That was a conversation for another time.

“How come you survived?”

“I was put into stasis,” he said, then continued when he noticed the perplexed look on her face.  
“It’s basically suspended animation. I came out three million years later, when the radiation levels were safe. Holly brought Rimmer back to keep me sane, so I’d have someone to talk to you know?” 

 

They sat smoking in silence for a while.

“I wonder what it’s like being dead,” said Sam.

“I dunno,” he said,  
“Is that why you’re being hesitant about being with him? Because he’s dead?”

‘If only it were that bloody simple,’ she thought.

“No, surprisingly that doesn’t actually bother me.”

And it really didn’t; she saw him as an actual living person, no different to Dave or the Cat.

She took a deep breath.

“Do you know what’s really bad Dave?”

“What?”

“I’ve had a longer conversation with you than I’ve had with him.”

“Well I’m thinking that you need to go and have a long conversation with him.”

 

Dave was right, it was time to clear the air. The poor guy had already apologised to her a thousand times over the whole kiss incident, and the more she thought about it the more she began to think it was unlikely that he’d try and make a move on her again, especially after what Dave had just said. 

‘He’s a decent guy Sam, you know this! You need to learn to trust him, if you don’t...you’re gonna lose him’

She was still struggling to understand exactly how she felt about him, but maybe a chat would help clear that up too.

“Oh Sam?”

“Yes?” 

“Stay out of the holo-suite wont you? Kryten’s the only one allowed in there; Rimmer gets real antsy about it, ever since the cat spilled a bowl of milk over one of the consoles and knocked his eyesight out for three weeks.”

“Really?”

“Yeah and getting on the wrong side of Rimmer is the last thing you want to do!” 

For Lister and the others, this was a throwaway comment. They all knew deep down that Rimmer was harmless.

To Sam though it meant something else entirely.

“How do you mean?”

“He gets angry, like proper angry! You should see what he does to some of the rooms on here, completely destroys them!”

“Destroys them how?” she asked warily

“Oh you know; fist marks in the walls, overturned kitchen appliances, that sort of thing.  
“You saw what he did to that thing in the factory!?”

“Yeah, but that was self-defence,” she said weakly.  
“Does he really get that angry about stuff?”

Lister didn’t consider for a moment that Sam might have been getting frightened by the conversation, he was well and truly off on one.

“Yeah, you don’t wanna be anywhere near him when he’s in that kind of mood! Destructive with a capital D! The power in those hands! It’s smeggin mind blowing!”

“Huh,” was all she could manage to say.

Lister didn’t know it, but he had just made an already tenuous situation a whole lot worse.

Sam decided on her way to the kitchen that there was no chance in hell that she was going to go near that man now.  
The conflicting thoughts in her head told her that he had saved her life, that he had been nothing but nice to her and to feel this way about him didn’t make sense.  
But phobias after all, are irrational. 

Besides, if he was as quick to anger as Lister had made out, maybe there was a certain level of instability there. Which meant, she reasoned, that he could feasibly snap at any given moment.

 

She kept a close look out, watching for him while she made her way though the corridors. Passing by the the holo-suite she could hear a mechanical grinding noise. She looked in and noticed that it was coming from the robot dog that had been in her room earlier. Somehow it had managed to get itself stuck on its back and appeared to be having great difficulty getting upright again.

“Oh mate, what have you been up to?” she asked gently, doing a quick 360 of the room to check that the ‘potentially unstable’ hologram wasn’t in there. Once she was sure the coast was clear, she went and helped the robot upright again. It twisted its head at her and scuttled off out the door.

“You’re welcome,” she said, absent-mindedly.

It was very warm in the suite and there was a noticeable humming noise that reminded her of the sound you got when you stood too close to a substation.  
There were flashing lights and beeping noises, and there had to be close to a hundred different buttons dotted about the consoles.

She was in the midst of examining some kind of strange looking circuit breaker on the wall when a strange sensation suddenly came over her.

There was a feeling in the air, and a feeling in her nose.

‘I remember this from before, this happened when...”

She turned around to discover that Rimmer had materialised directly behind her, and she found herself walking straight into his chest.

She realised she’d been looking for his full form when she checked the room. She hadn’t been looking for his light-bee.

“Oh my fucking god!” she cried, jumping back.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, frowning down at her. 

She felt under intense scrutiny, like a child who had been caught with their hand in the biscuit tin, suddenly feeling impossibly smaller than her five foot frame.

 

“I didn’t touch anything! I wouldn’t! I was only looking!” 

He fixed her with a very serious expression, and she made to leave but he moved back and blocked the door.

“No, you’re not running away again,” he said.

And that was when she started to panic.

 

His eyes bore into her. They seemed to be darkening by the minute, turning from their usual hazel into a darker chocolate colour. She found herself wondering if they’d done that when he was alive, or if it was a hologram thing.  
Of course it made sense that he would be angry. She wasn’t supposed to be in here, and she had also snubbed him no less than three times the day before.

‘I guess his patience has run out.’

‘No more Mr nice guy.’

She found herself suppressing the urge to scream.

 

“You and I have something we need to set straight,” he said, the same intensity flaring in his eyes.

She said nothing.

“You’re messing with my head Sam, and I’m not really sure how much more I can take.”

“Arnold I,”

“Let me finish,” he said sternly, holding up his index finger.

“I have feelings for you.  
I know it’s wrong, I know that I shouldn’t feel this way but I can’t help it. I’ve tried to block it out, but the fact is that I can’t get you out of my head. Although I am fully aware that you don’t feel the same way.”

He suddenly noticed her backing up against the wall, it seemed to him like she was trying to put as much distance between them as possible.

 

“What’s the matter now?!” he said, but Sam couldn’t hear any concern in the voice. There was a strong hint of impatience though.

“I’m sorry for yesterday, I was scared!”

“What?!” he looked really impatient now, frowning and narrowing his eyes at her in a way that she really didn’t care for.

“And I didn’t mean to come in here! I only came in to sort out the robot dog thing!” her voice broke at the end of her sentence.

“Stop interrupting me Sam, I have something that I need to say!” he said angrily, advancing on her.

She heard the scream of “Help!” erupt from her mouth before she even had the chance to register saying it.

He stopped in his advancement towards her, frown still deep and eyes still narrowed.

“Sam, what are you doing?”

“Help me!” she cried again, although she knew it was fruitless. The holo-suite was nowhere near the bunk room or the Cat’s quarters and Kryten’s charging station was on the other side of the ship.

“Sam, what are you doing?” he repeated, advancing on her again, not stopping until he was virtually face to face with her.

She couldn’t fight the overwhelming instinct; the instinct that made her feel threatened, and she cowered away from him.

Upon noticing this, he took a few steps back and looked at her with a face that, to her, seemed to reflect anger and confusion simultaneously.

“Why are you cowering?”

“Please don’t hurt me”

That comment, it took him right back to their first meeting in that hideous prison cell of hers, but that’s when she had believed he was in cahoots with Magnuson.

She knew more than ever now that he wasn’t, after all he had obliterated the thing right in front of her eyes. He was convinced that he had gained her trust after that incident and was perplexed that he somehow seemed to have lost it again.

“Why is she frightened of me again?’  
He supposed that maybe it was the kiss.

“Look Sam, I’m not going to try and kiss you again,” he said firmly.  
He grabbed her arms, which only panicked her even more when she couldn’t shake them free of his grip.

“It’s alright,” he kept trying to say, growing more and more impatient that his attempts at trying to calm her weren’t working.

But it wasn’t alright for Samantha Simpson. 

‘I can’t do this,’ she thought. ‘I thought I could but I can’t! He’s a man, he’s a man just like all the others.  
“He’s gonna hurt me bad!’

She had spent her whole life being a victim to men.

More than anything she just wanted to get out of this room, but her racing mind told her that that wouldn’t be an option.

‘You’ll never outrun him, besides, attempting to leave would just make him more angry.’

The irony of this thought was that the man in front of her was no longer angry, in fact he was greatly concerned. But she was too far gone in her spiral of panic to register the change in his emotional state.

“Sam, please!” he tried again to comfort her but this time she said,

“If you hurt me I’ll scream even louder! Someone will hear!!” 

“I don’t understand what I’m supposed to have done!” he cried hysterically.

At which point she landed him a sharp kick, straight in the groin. She knew it wouldn’t affect him, it had been a reflex action more than anything else.  
What happened next baffled her completely though.

The man in front of her immediately dropped his hold on her arms and doubled over in pain. He staggered over to one of the consoles in an effort to brace himself against it rather than end up on the floor. His face told her of the great pain he was in.

‘He must still be broken,’ she thought to herself, but wasted no time in hanging about. She ran out the room and went racing off down the corridor, as fast as her limp would allow, not entirely sure where she was going. She just knew that she needed to put as much distance between herself and the holo-suite as possible. She ran down a couple of staircases and then realised with a sinking feeling, that she was completely lost. 

‘The exit, I have to find the exit.’

Her inner monologue was going into overdrive.

‘I need to get off the ship, I need to get back home. I’ve royally fucked everything up here, that was a decent guy that I just kicked in the nuts. All because of my stupid trust issues! I’m losing it, I’m losing it big time. I need to get home, get home and check myself into the nearest psychiatric unit!’

Unfortunately she had no idea which way she needed to go to get to the exit, she hadn’t been concentrating when Lister had carried her in a few days ago, and besides the corridors all looked the bloody same. She eventually managed to follow the signs to the landing bay only to realise, of course, that the exit hatch was locked and she had no idea how to open it.

‘I’m trapped on this ship.’

Now she didn’t have a clue where to go, there were about four exits from the bay and she now couldn’t remember which one she’d come in through. Worse than that it was freezing cold down here and she didn’t have a jumper.

In the end she decided the best bet would be to go and sit in Starbug, in the the hopes that it might be a bit warmer in there. Thankfully the craft was unlocked, but it was just as cold as the bay itself. She huddled up on what was normally the Cat’s chair and began to sob quietly, hoping that one of the others might somehow magically turn up and help her to get home.

Anyone but him...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Rape reference.

After a while the cold started to get to her so much that she began scrambling around to find the button for the heating, if the craft even had any fitted. She found a compartment near the front of the cockpit and yanked it open, only to discover that there was nothing inside it but a manky packet of polos and a pair of furry dice. She slammed the compartment shut in a rage, trapping her index finger in the process. Whimpering with pain, she reopened the compartment and yanked her bruised, rapidly swelling finger free. This started her crying all over again.

 

And of course it wasn’t Kryten, Lister, or the Cat who turned up.

It was him.

She was surprised at how well she knew the sound of his footsteps.

Kryten had great big clomping metal feet, Lister tended to plod along, and the cat never went anywhere without his trademark strut.

Those gentle footfalls couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said as he entered the cockpit,  
“What are you doing down here, it’s freezing?” he flicked a switch on the wall near the entrance.

She was relieved to hear the whirring sound of what she assumed was the craft’s heating starting up. “Is it ok to come in?” he asked.

She very nearly shook her head.

‘Pull yourself together Sam.’

She nodded.

“What are you doing down here?” he repeated.

“I was trying to get off the ship,” she sniffed,  
“And then I got lost.”

“Why were you trying to get off?”

“Cos I’ve messed everything up Arnold! I’ve been so horrible to you and you’ve every right to be angry.”

“I’m not angry Sam,” he said, interrupting her,  
“I’m just confused.”

He sat down in Lister’s chair, wincing slightly as he did so, his groinal region was still very tender.

After a while he said,

“Sam, why did you think I was going to hurt you?”

She took a deep breath.

“Dave said...”

“I might have known that Lister would be behind this.  
What’s he been saying about me?”

“He just told me that you get really angry and destructive sometimes.”

That was something that Rimmer couldn’t really deny.

“Yes,” he said resignedly,  
“I do have a temper, and yes I can be destructive sometimes, but I don’t hurt people!  
I’ve never hurt anyone! Aside from psychotic holograms...

At any rate, you’re the last person in the universe that I would ever hurt.”

And then he added,

“I love you.”

‘Bugger,’ he thought, knowing full well that this was neither the time nor the place to be making statements like that. But it had just slipped out, and now that it was out there, there was nothing on heaven or Io he could do to take it back.

‘He’s just said he loves me.’

She was lost in his eyes for a moment, the sincerity in those swirls of brown and green seemed to have a calming effect on her and she suddenly found herself feeling more relaxed than she had felt all day.

‘Can I trust him...?’

The only problem was that Daniel had said he loved her too, and then he’d beat her.

She couldn’t help the flinch that occurred when he took her hands in his. She supposed that her body must still have been in ‘fight or flight’ mode.

 

He looked momentarily hurt at her reaction, but didn’t release her hands. It was a light grasp though, she could have easily pulled away, and yet she found herself not really wanting to. There was something very soothing about her small hands being encased in his much larger ones. Perhaps it was the heat of his hard-light skin, she wasn’t really sure.

“What happened to your finger?” he said, sounding overly concerned over what was merely just a bruise.

“I trapped it.”

“I think there’s some arnica oil in the first aid kit, that’s good for bruising,” he said, disappearing into the back room momentarily to retrieve it.

He sat back down and began to carefully apply the liquid over her swollen finger.

‘He’s so gentle,’ she thought to herself.

Daniel could never in a million years have been referred to as a gentle man. And Steve?  
She doubt if he even knew what the word meant. 

‘Trust him Sam.’

After Rimmer had finished with the arnica, he kissed her finger softly. 

“Sorry that was inappropriate,” he said, instantly pulling away from her.

“No its ok, it’s ok,” she said reassuring him, and once he was sure that she was genuinely ok, he spoke.

“This will be good for the rest of your bruises,” he said handing her the tube.

“I thought we’d turned a corner,” he continued,  
“I didn’t think you saw me as a threat anymore.  
I mean, I almost obliterated myself trying to save you.  
I’ve seen you naked and...well...you know,” he looked at the floor.

She did know.

She had felt so ashamed, and he had somehow managed to make that feeling go away. She had felt something in that moment, something that had changed her perception of him. From that moment on, he had no longer been a stranger to her.

He had become, dare she say it, a friend?”

So how had things gone so tits up?

Trust issues? Man phobia? Take your pick.

“I really don’t understand why you still think I’m a monster?”  
The sadness in his voice nearly broke her heart.

She sighed,

“I don’t think you’re a monster Arnold.”

“Really? Because it’s starting to look that way from where I’m sitting.”

“Look Arnold, the truth is...I have a big problem with men, trusting them I mean.”

He frowned momentarily.

“Has someone hurt you?  
Aside from that bastard hologram I mean?”

His term ‘bastard hologram’ amused her somewhere at the back of her mind, and she knew that if she’d been in a better mood she would have found it down right hilarious.

“Arnold, you just...you just wouldn’t understand.”

“But I want to understand Sam! I want to!”

He had taken her hands in his again, and was rubbing his thumbs over the backs of them, in an effort to calm her no doubt.

“Try me.”

She once again looked into his eyes and found the comfort there that she had so desperately been seeking. He was gazing at her profoundly, in the same way that he had done in the holo-suite, his eyes doing that weird darkening thing again. There was nothing frightening about them now however.

‘Have his eyes always been so calming? Was I just too wound up to really notice them before?’

She made several attempts to look away, but found that she couldn’t. They were connected now, hand in hand and eye to eye.  
But there was a deeper connection between them, an unseen one, but Sam could feel it more than ever now.  
And it was at that precise moment that something inside her clicked.

‘He’s not a threat Sam...’

Letting out a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding, she suddenly found herself wanting to tell him everything.

“My first boyfriend...he used to hit me.”

“He used to hit you?” 

“Sometimes in the face, sometimes in the stomach, it all depended on what mood he was in.”

His look was one of complete disbelief.

“How could anyone ever want to hurt you?”

She took a shaky breath,  
“I suppose it’s cos I wasn’t very good at ironing, or mowing the lawn.”

She broke away from his gaze to look at the floor.

 

“Something else happened didn’t it?” he said gently. 

‘How is it that he can read me so well?’

 

“Last Christmas...last Christmas...well I was...I was raped by a long time friend of my dads. His name was Steve.”

She couldn’t stand to see the expression which crept across his handsome features.

It was sad and empty, almost broken.

“Down in the cellar,” she continued,  
“He forced his disgusting tongue down my throat...”

He winced at that, illustrating his complete comprehension of her reaction to their kiss.

 

“I tried to fight him, I tried so hard, but he was too strong! Just like that monster in the factory! Just like Daniel! All men have ever done is make me feel weak and helpless!”

Suddenly the details of the attack all came racing out at a mile a minute. She found herself spilling everything, what he’d done, how he’d done it, exactly how it had made her feel.

 

The man in front of her was looking at her in a way that someone might look at a box of abandoned kittens left out in the rain.

“Arnold, please say something?” 

In her mind she knew how this part would go. He would get up and leave. He would no longer have any interest in her whatsoever, either because he now saw her as a victim which would be a complete turn off to him.  
Or he would be disgusted by the fact that she’d let it happen and not put up enough of a fight.

Maybe it would all just be too much for him to handle.

But he didn’t get up and leave.

Instead he pulled her into an embrace.

“You’re cold,” he noted.

She eagerly burrowed into his warmth, beginning to cry in earnest as feelings that she had held in for so long now came soaring to the surface.

Rimmer said nothing, concerned that whatever he did say might be the wrong thing. Instead he just held on to her tightly.

“Im so sorry,” she said eventually.

“For what?”

“For thinking all those terrible things about you! For thinking that you could be anything like those other horrible men! You saved my life and I...and...I”

“After what you’ve been through, I think you had you reasons,” he said sympathetically, stroking her hair.

 

“I see him in my dreams Arnold, I see him and I feel him...”

“It’s alright, it’s alright.”

“He made me feel so horrible!”

“I know, shhh, it’s ok.”

.  
Eventually, they pulled back from one another.

“Did they arrest him?”

“Who, Steve?” she sniffed.

“Yes.”

“I never reported it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I couldn’t bear the thought of going over it again! Besides the police in our area are next to useless.” She yawned, her traumatic confession had left her feeling emotionally drained, and it was getting late anyway. 

“Well, what did your parents say?”

“They don’t know.”

A pause.

“Am I the first person you’ve told?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling a little ashamed at admitting this.

“How have you kept all this to yourself?!”

Instead of answering she did another huge yawn and it was more than clear to him that she needed rest.

He suddenly gathered her up in his arms, incurring a surprised squeak from her.

“Where are you taking me?” 

“To bed, you need rest.”

“You don’t have to carry me, I can walk you know?”

“I want to,” was his simple reply.

And so she put her arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder.

Once they reached her quarters he gently placed her in the bed and put the covers over her, smiling as she wrapped herself up in the quilt.

“Are you hungry? I can get Kryten to bring you something?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want me to stay?” he said softly, and then upon noticing the look of alarm on her face added,

“For a cuddle I mean.”

He scolded himself for even saying that. The idea of physically getting into bed with her would be far too much for her to handle, and he was now convinced that he’d messed things up again.

But her response brought a smile to his face.

 

“Yeah, I would like that.”

He got in the bed and cuddled up to her, putting them in a spooning position.

“Sam,” he spoke into her ear, “It would mean so much to me if you could trust me, I mean really trust me.”

“I do.”

“Do you really? Or will you wake up in the morning and be afraid of me again?”

“No...won’t.”

He wasn’t overly convinced though but she grabbed his arm and wrapped it around her middle, sighing contentedly in a way that told him she’d reached optimum comfort level, and so he took that to be a signal of progress.

Not long after that she began to snore.

Rimmer felt like letting out his own contented sigh, until it dawned on him that she was only using him for his body, and not in the good way.

‘You’re nothing more than a glorified electric blanket,’ he said to himself.

But it was so nice to be lying so close to her, it was actually no less than glorious.  
The soft sound of her snoring coupled with the rise and fall of her chest comforted him immensely, along with the natural scent of her skin. That scent, he decided, was more intoxicating than anything that could come out of a bottle.

 

He noticed an uninjured patch of skin on her neck, in amongst the bites and bruises, and longed with every fibre of his being to place a soft kiss on it.

But he wasn’t going to make that mistake again, things seemed to be going well and he wasn’t about to screw them up.

‘You told he that you love her, and she didn’t freak out. Maybe that’s a good thing?  
I wonder how she genuinely feels about me though?’

He lay there with her for about an hour or so, until he started to feel sleepy himself and knew that his charge was getting low.

The problem was though he couldn’t bring himself to leave the soft, comforting body currently wrapped in his arms.  
A body that he mentally vowed to himself that he would protect against all odds. She would never fall victim to anyone ever again.  
He would make sure of that.

And that animal Steve, well he would find the man...and then he would kill him, as slowly and as painfully as possible.

The intensity of this thought shocked him

‘You’re not a violent man Rimmer’

Maybe not, but people could change...

 

‘You need to go and recharge Rimmer, you know your bee creeps her out.  
I know, but, maybe just a few more minutes...’

A few more minutes though were a few more minutes too many, and Arnold Rimmer finally succumbed to his exhaustion and disappeared inside his projection device.

 

 

Sam awoke to find the strange metal device sitting in the bed next to her. Thankfully it no longer scared her quite as much as it had done before, but she was more than a little concerned.  
Especially when she noticed the purple flashing light.

She leapt out of bed and ran off to find one of the others.

Luckily, as was habit, she found the three of them in the bunk room. Kryten was just serving up breakfast.

“Good morning Miss! I have some breakfast here for you,” he said as he saw her come in.

“Something’s wrong with Arnold!” she cried.

 “What do you mean?” asked Lister.

“There’s a purple flashing light on his light-bee!”

Kryten answered,

“Why he’s just in rest mode Miss, it’s nothing to be worried about.”

“Rest mode?”

“It basically means he was too lazy to get off his ass and go and recharge,” said Lister.

 “So he’s ok?”

 “He’s just asleep Miss.”

 “Ok,” she said, clearly relieved.

 “Please sit down Miss, there’s plenty of breakfast to go round.”

“You know purple stands for playtime baby!” said Cat, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

“Pardon?” she said, shuffling away from him slightly. 

Lister chuckled,  
   
“Yeah, we always like to move him round the ship when he’s asleep. Well, it’s the one and only time you can actually do anything to him, so we like to make the most of it don’t we Cat!?  
“I like to do my dirty laundry basket! Or sometimes the garbage disposal!”

“I prefer the toilet seat!” said Cat.

 “Oh yeah, that one really pisses him off!” 

“That sounds mean,” said Sam, but she was smiling a little as she said it.  
“Please don’t tell me you partake in all this Kryten?”

 “Certainly not! I would never stoop to such behaviour!”

“Kryten...?” said Lister knowingly.

“Well, I may have shut him in one of the utility closets on a couple of occasions,” said the mechanoid, obviously guilty at his confession.

 “Oh Kryten...” she said, but it was in jest.  
She began to help herself to some pancakes with maple syrup.

 “I’m sorry Miss, but he had vexed me something terrible!”

 “Just don’t whatever you do shut him in the fridge!” said Lister between fork fulls of scrambled egg.

 “Why, what happened?”

 “When he rematerialised he kind of got stuck inside and outside at the same time if that makes sense.”

 “Hey baby, you know those weird glitches you get on video games sometimes? Where the characters go all stretchy? That’s exactly what he looked like!”

 “Cat’s right,” said Lister,    
“Gave me nightmares for weeks!” he shuddered.

“Was he ok?” she asked.

 “Oh yeah he was fine after a couple of days, although Kryten did have to take the fridge apart!”

 “If it all the same to you guys,” she said,  
“I think I’ll just leave him in the bed.”

“Oh yeah!? The bed?” said Lister teasingly, who had now started on some waffles piled high with cream and chocolate sauce.

 

“We were just cuddling, Dave!” she said defensively.

“Ok ok! It’s nothing to do with me anyway!  
Only Rimmer doesn’t exactly strike me as the cuddling type.”

“Oh believe me Dave, he’s very...”

“Would you like some more pancakes miss!?” interrupted Kryten, near enough shoving the plate in her face.

“Er no that’s ok thanks Kryten, I haven’t finished the ones I’ve got yet.”

As the mechanoid left the bunkroom with a huff, Lister and Sam shot each other a ‘What’s up with him?’ look.

“What are your plans for today then?” asked Lister eventually.

“I don’t know really,” she said,  
“I suppose it might be nice to have a tour of the ship.”

“I don’t mind showing you round, unless you’d rather go with lover boy?!”

“We’re not lovers Dave!” she cried, although she could feel a blush spreading across her cheeks which begged to differ.

‘What exactly were they if not lovers?’

Last night, she had bared her soul to him, told him things that she’d never told anyone else. She had made herself as vulnerable as she had done in the factory when they had first met. On an emotional level this time though rather than a physical one.

He had made her feel safe to the point that she really couldn’t understand how she had ever been frightened of him.  
Her mind began shooting of a barrage of feelings, and it was only now that she understood completely what they meant.

“I think I’ll go and see if he’s awake yet,” she said, excusing herself from the breakfast table.

“You know what I don’t get?” asked Cat after she had left, pausing in the act of consuming his milk and krispies.

“What in Cloister’s name can she possibly see in old goal-post head?!”

“Beats me Cat,” said Lister, who was starting to feel a twinge of jealousy at his best friends good fortune in the relationship department.

Every day he missed Kochanski, but something told him that today would be more painful than normal.

 

Sam found Rimmer sitting on the edge of the bed facing away from her, but he stood and turned round to face her when he heard her come in.

“I’m sorry I fell asleep,” he said instantly, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s ok, I think I might be getting a soft spot for that dinky little device. Dare I say, I’m finding it almost cute.”

He frowned.

“It’s anything but cute Sam.”

“It’s a part of you, and that makes it cute to me.”

“If you say so,” he said,  
“How’s your finger?” 

“Sore,” she replied,  
“How’s your pain situation?”

“Broken,” he replied.

“Broken?”

“Broken in that I can’t fix it, not without doing a hard reset.”

“And what happens if you do that?”

“My memories get wiped.”

“Oh my god,” Sam said, the guilt hitting her all at once.  
“This is my fault! You broke yourself saving me and I...”

“I chose to do what I did Sam I wasn’t pushed into it by anyone and god knows I had enough warnings from Kryten about it. I chose to ignore him.”

 

“I think it’s actually a good thing though,” he continued,  
“I’ve been moaning for years about wanting to feel pain and in all honesty I think it’s done me good. It’s certainly made me feel more human.  
Theres nothing like a good kick in the love spuds to make someone feel like they’re alive.”

“Yeah sorry about that,” she said, trying exceptionally hard not to giggle at the term ‘love spuds.’

“Forgiven,” he said, smiling softly.

“Arnold I have something to say.”

“Me first!” he said, holding up his index finger in the same manner that he had done in the holo-suite the day before.

“I want you to be aware that I didn’t hold a very high position on this ship. I know it might seem like I did as you’ve probably noticed that the other crew members see me as their superior.”

Sam found this statement to be completely adorable, the truth being that the others saw Rimmer as anything BUT their superior.  
She wasn’t about to disillusion him though.

“Well, I suppose I technically am their superior,” he continued, “But not in the way you probably think.  
I always wanted to be an officer, but I was too stupid to pass the astronavigation exams, and I’m...well the sad truth of it is that I was nothing more than a second technician.”

“Ok,” said Sam.

“Sam, my biggest responsibility was maintaining the vending machines!” he said sadly. 

“I just felt you should know the whole truth about me, before you make a decision about whether you like me or not.”

“Arnold, I’m a college drop out, the only job I’ve ever held is a waitressing one at some run down shithole of a cafe in one of Jupiter’s worst down and out regions.  
And I sucked at it, because I was always drinking!  
Oh and I smoke too! Does that put you off ME?”

During her speech she had clambered onto the bed and was now facing him on her knees, equalising their height difference.

“No,” he said rigidly, “Nothing could ever put me off you.”

They stood gazing at each other for what seemed like an eternity.

Then for some reason he started gabbling again.

“The things is, we’re not really compatible on any level are we and I think...”

“I love you,” she said.

He stopped short in his tirade and screwed his eyes up.

“Sorry can you say that again? I think my hearing must have glitched or something,” he said, thumping the palm of his hand against one of his ears.

“I could have sworn you said...”

“I love you,” she said again.

His eyes widened momentarily,

“Ok so do you mean that in a friendly sort of way? Or a heroic sort of way? I just want to be clear so there’s no misunderstandings...”

“Do you ever stop fucking talking?” she cried, taking his head in her hands and kissing him deeply. 

There was no hesitation whatsoever on Sam’s part, she was intent on exploring the entirety of the hologram’s mouth.  
He was apparently still very wary about using his own tongue, but when hers found his and gently coaxed it into action, he began to kiss her back.

“You’ve had Kryten’s pancakes,” he said, licking up the traces of syrup at the corners of her mouth.  
An intense feeling of sexual desire spread up and over Sam, until her head was spinning. She felt as if she would never be able to get enough of the wonderful hologrammatic mouth currently locked onto hers.  
They kissed for another few minutes or so, and when they finally broke apart, she was struggling for breath.

“Are you alright?” he asked her, her head now in his hands.

“Oh, I’m better than alright,” she panted.

Nose to nose, they smiled contentedly at one another.

Eventually she pulled back from him.

“I need to go and have a shower,” she said, “But maybe you could give me a tour of the ship later on?”

“Yes...of course...anything,” replied Rimmer, eyes wide and mouth parted.

Sam smiled at the effect she had had on him.

“I’ll see you later then,” she kissed him on the cheek before heading into the bathroom.

She could feel tears forming in the corners of her eyes.  
This time however, for perhaps the one and only time in her entire life, they were tears of joy.


	8. Chapter 8

A little later on that morning Lister was walking past the kitchen when he heard someone singing a terrible rendition of “Love is all around me.”

‘That’s Rimmer’s tuneless voice,” he thought to himself.  
He turned back and walked in to confirm that the grating noise was indeed coming from his friend, who was currently involved in the task of making a cup of coffee.

“Rimmer, what are you doing?”

“Good morning Listy Miladdo! And how are you this fine morning?”

“I’m good,” replied Lister, a little unnerved by Rimmer’s unusual mood.  
“Clearly not as good as you though.”

Kryten entered.

“Oh it’s you sir,” he said, addressing Rimmer,  
“I couldn’t fathom out where that dreadful noise was coming from! I think we should take you over to the medibay and get you checked out. Now have you been remembering to install your updates?” he pointed a finger at the hologram.

“Love is not a glitch Kryten!” replied Rimmer, grinning at him. He was feeling so sky high this morning that not even the negative comments about his singing could bring him down.

“Love, sir?”

“Yes! I suppose one could now say that Sam and I are officially an item.”

“So you’ve done the whole ‘I love you thing?’ asked Lister.

“We have indeed Listy, we have indeed!  
But better than that!” he continued, pouring milk into the coffee,  
“We kissed!”

“I take it it was a mutual kiss this time then?”

“It was magnificent Lister,” replied Rimmer, a somewhat ‘far away’ look gracing his features. 

“Well I’m happy for you man, really I am, I suppose the only bit of advice I can give you is don’t mess it up!”

“Oh I’m not planning on doing that any time soon Listy,” beamed the older man.

“What do you think then Kryten?” asked Lister, gently nudging the mechanoid.

“What do I think? What I think is that there are a thousand and one chores on this ship that need doing, and I’m not going to get them done standing around here chatting idly to you two all day! Please excuse me!” he then proceeded to exit the kitchen in the same manner that he had exited the bunk room earlier that morning.

‘What the smeg is up with him?” thought Lister.

Rimmer however, either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. He began adding sugar to the coffee.

“What you up to now then man?”

“I’m taking my love interest a coffee and then I’m giving her a tour of the ship!”  
Rimmer’s grin appeared to be getting wider by the minute.

“Sounds good,” replied the scouser,  
“Just take my advice and don’t linger too long on the diesel decks, you don’t wanna bore the pants off her so soon into the relationship. Oh and Rimmer?”

The hologram turned to face him on his way out of the door, and the younger man pinched him on the arm.

“Ow Lister what the smeg was that for?!”

“Sorry man, Kryten told me about your pain situation and I couldn’t resist.  
You know,” he said pensively,  
“I’ve got a lot of years of punches to catch up on.”

Tho hologram shot him a meaningful look,

“Just be grateful that I’m in a good mood today Listy! It’s quite possible that it’s just spared you from a broken face!”

“Yeah yeah whatever man!” replied Lister with a smile on his face,  
“Go and tend to her ladyship!” he called out as the hologram left the room.

 

Rimmer showed Sam every last inch of the ship and, as they traversed the corridors, she discovered an exceedingly chatty side to the hologram that she hand’t known existed. He was keen to tell her everything about his life [and death].  
She smiled as she looked up at him, listening to him talking about how he had first met Lister, how they had both signed up for Red Dwarf together and had both landed jobs as technicians. He briefly mentioned his death but didn’t appear to want to linger on the subject, and she could tell by his tone and the change in his facial expression that it hurt him to think about it. She could also sense that he was hiding something about the accident, but he clearly didn’t wasn’t to discuss that either and she wasn’t going to force the matter.

His childhood was another topic that had been deliberately left out of the discussion.

‘I wonder what happened to him...’ she thought.

He seemed to greatly enjoy regaling her about his stint as Ace and exactly what that had entailed. He also touched on his passion for Morris dancing, Hammond organ music and 19th century telegraph poles. 

They had at this point reached Parrott’s bar, and he gestured for her to sit down.

“Are you still listening?”

She instantly replied,  
“Of course I am!” a little hurt that he had implied she hadn’t been.

“No, I mean you’re still listening to me, you haven’t got bored or drifted off to think about something else?”

“Of course I haven’t!” Why would I!?”

He frowned deeply,  
“Because no one’s ever really been interested in what I have to say. Ever.”

There was a certain amount of anguish to his tone, and that upset her a little.

“Well I am!” she said, taking his hand and instantly enjoying the heat that spread up her arm.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He smiled softly.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Arnold,” she said uneasily, “You know I have a problem with...”

“I was thinking of a lemonade, or a coke” he said reassuringly.

“A lemonade would be good,” she replied.

“Mind you, finding the bloody stuff might be a near impossible task,” he said, grumbling as he searched the entirety of the counter for the requested beverage.

“Kryten tells me he cleans in here but something tells me he’s talking bollocks!”

She chuckled at that,

“Arnold it’s fine, I’ll just have a water or something...”

“Aha!” he said, and retuned to the table with two old fashioned looking bottles of lemonade.

“How brave are you feeling today?” he said, blowing the dust off the bottle caps and, to her surprise, pulling them off with his bare hands.  
Now that she was no longer afraid of it, his hard-light strength fascinated her immensely.

“Arnold are these from like the eighteenth century?!” she giggled.

“Quite possibly,” he said,  
“Let me try it first,”  
He poured some into his glass and drank it.

“It’s actually alright,” he confirmed and poured hers into her glass for her.

He watched her take a sip and then said,

“Talk to me!” with a very intense look in his eyes.

“I am talking to you!”

“No you know what I mean, tell me about yourself! You’ve been listening to me droning on!”

She took another sip of her lemonade, it was nice and refreshing.

“There’s not much to tell really, I’m afraid I’ve not led a very eventful life, and the things that have had the biggest impact, well you know about them already.”

She looked up to meet his gaze and could tell by his expression that he wasn’t really satisfied with what she had said.

“I could tell you about my childhood, I suppose?”

“Please do!’

Her childhood had been one of her happiest times and the memories came flooding back in an instant.  
She told him how kind and loving her parents had been, how she’d never wanted for anything, how they’d encouraged her in everything she’d wanted to do.

At one point during her narrative she thought she saw something in his eyes, a flicker of emotion, but it was quickly masked again. 

‘Whatever did happen,’ she thought, “he’s gotten pretty good and blocking it out.’ 

The tragedy of it all was that she wanted him to pour his heart out to her. She wanted to comfort him in the way that he had comforted her, wanted desperately to ease the pain that he had clearly buried deep inside himself somewhere. There was no way she was going to push him into confiding in her though. He would tell her when he was good and ready.

She decided to change the subject.

“Are you from Jupiter?” 

“No, Io.”

Her blood ran cold.

“You’re from Io?”

“What’s wrong with that?” he asked with a baffled look on his face.

“It’s nothing,” she replied.

“Well it’s clearly something,” he probed.

“Arnold, I...”

“Tell me.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just...that’s where HE comes from.”

“Who, Steve?”

She nodded.

“Oh...” he said,  
“That doesn’t put you off me does it?”

“No Arnold no! Not in the slightest! It just shocked me a bit that’s all.  
He doesn’t sound anything like you though, his voice is really rough, he drops all his consonants.”

“It sounds like he’s from the Northern District, I’m from the South,” he said.  
“It is amazing just how much the accents differ.”

“I’m glad you don’t sound like him.”

Rimmer just smiled at her.  
Inside his brain was working overtime.

‘I know most of Io like the back of my hand, it shouldn’t be too difficult to track that animal down.  
Track him down and then...  
Stop it Rimmer! Stop it now!  
Thoughts like that are going to lead you down a dark path, a path you really shouldn’t be going down.’

 

“Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again,” he suddenly said out of nowhere.

“Well Arnold, I don’t think that’s something you can control...”

“I’ll make it my mission,” he said, taking both her hands in his.  
“I’ll protect you, I promise you that.”

The tension in the room suddenly seemed to reach fever pitch.

“Do you know that Sam? I need you to know that?!”

“I know,” she said, and then a lot more softly,  
“I know.”  
She leant across the table to kiss him, marvelling at how natural this demonstration of affection now felt.

‘How did I ever have a problem with this?’ she thought.

 

“What’s your star sign?” she asked as they left the bar and resumed their tour.

“Aries, why?”

“I used to be really into my astrology.”

“You can’t say that you believe all that mumbo jumbo!?” he said mockingly

“Um yes I do actually,” she said, hitting him playfully on the arm.

“I’m a Sagittarius, which means that we are super compatible!”

“Oh yes and how does that work then?”

“Well, we’re both fire signs and that means that we have a natural...” her voice tailed off as she spotted Bob the skutter rounding the corner in front of them.

“Oh it’s you again,” she cried with great joy.  
“Here boy!” she said, getting down on her knees and beckoning the little robot.

“Sam that’s not a dog,” said Rimmer, looking down at her perplexedly.

“I know it’s not a real dog Arnold!”

“Sam it’s a service droid, designed for carrying out menial tasks on the ship, mostly repairs. It’s called a skutter.”

“Come here boy, come here!” she was still intent on coaxing Bob.

“Sam, they don’t respond to commands in that way...” he began, but then stopped as he saw the maintenance droid making it’s way towards them and then happily allowing Sam to pat it’s head.

“That’s very odd,” said Rimmer,  
“They normally only respond to people like that when they’ve got a can of WD40 in their pocket.”

“I guess you can call me the skutter whisperer,” she said smiling up at him.  
“Does he have a name?”

“Lister calls it Bob.”

“Well hello there Bob,” she said.

Rimmer couldn’t help but smile at the amount of affection his lover was bestowing on what was literally just a hunk of metal with some basic programming. 

“Come on,” he said, pulling her up,  
“I haven’t shown you the diesel decks yet!”

“They don’t sound dreadfully interesting Arnold.”

“Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong!” he said as he led her off down the corridor.

 

Cat was on his [Lister’s] bunk when the scouser walked into the bunk room later that day. 

He was trimming his claws, which were ending up all over the floor.

Kryten was furiously trying to sweep them up.

“How’s it going Krytes?” Lister asked, suspecting that the mech was still in the foul temper that he had been in earlier.

“I wouldn’t bother bud, he’s in the worst mood ever!”

“Well I wouldn’t be if a certain feline didn’t keep dropping his claws all over the floor!”

“It’s called grooming eraser head! And it’s an essential part of my maintenance! I got standards to uphold you know!!”

“Kryten,” said Lister firmly, taking the broom from him,  
“What’s going on?”

The mechanoid sighed.

“It just seems to me sir that I am only person who is thinking clearly on this ship at the moment!”

“This is about Sam and Rimmer isn’t it?”

“Well yes sir as a matter of fact it is! She’s supposed to be going home this afternoon and it appears that everyone on the ship seems to have forgotten except me! Everyone is just living in cloud cuckoo land, even you sir!”

“Me? What have I done?”

“You are just as caught up with this whole thing as they are! Encouraging Mr Rimmer, enforcing the idea that this relationship is ok.”

“Well it is ok in my books! Besides she doesn’t have to go home today, we’re not in any rush to leave are we? I know I’m not and you don’t care do you Cat?”

“So long as I got a place to plug in my curling tongs, I don’t care where I’m at!”

“You see? Give it a bit of time, maybe they’ll come to the conclusion themselves that they aren’t right for each other.”

Why is this so important to you Kryten?”

“Because I’m worried sir, I’m very worried. I am convinced that Mr Rimmer will mess this relationship up and that they will both get hurt in the process.”

 

“Rimmer’s not gonna mess up Kryten! He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Sam!”

“Oh really sir? How long do you think it will be before he starts treating her the way he treats the rest of us?”

“I give it another couple hours,” said Cat.

“What are you talkin about Kryten? Rimmer doesn’t treat us badly he...well he...I know sometimes he...I’m sure he has his reasons for doing the things he does!” 

Listers argument was in no way watertight.

“Whether he has a reason or not, he still does them! And on another note, don’t you think things are happening just a little too quickly?”  
I mean, they’ve not known each other a week and they’ve already done I love yous and kisses and goodness knows what else!  
That’s surely not normal is it sir?”

“Kryten, I fell in love with Krissy the first moment I laid eyes on her so you’re asking the wrong guy here.”

Upon mentioning her name Lister felt that horrible pang of jealousy rise to the surface again. He shook the feeling away. 

“Hang on a minute Krytes, what about you and that green blob thing?”

“Her name was Cassandra! And yes I did care for her, very much so as a matter of fact. But I did the right thing in the end! I let her go!”

“Yes Kryten but there’s one big difference between you and Cassandra, and Sam and Rimmer. Sam doesn’t have a husband she needs to go home to.”

Kryten was silent for a while.

Eventually he said in a gentle tone,

“I know that you probably disagree with me immensely here sir, but I have a bad feeling about this relationship that I just can’t shake off. I think someone needs to put a stop to it.”

“Well it’s gonna have to be you, cos I’m not pissing all over my best friends bonfire, not when he’s the happiest I’ve seen him in years!”

“Then I shall,” said the mechanoid resignedly,  
“I just hope they haven’t copulated yet!”

“You what?!” said Lister.

“Copulated sir, you know, the horizontal shuffle? Or whatever you humans like to call it!”

“It’s called sex Kryten, and what the smeg does that have to do with anything?!”

“Humans bond on a much deeper level after they have partaken in this ‘sex activity’, it will be much more difficult to make them see reason,” Kryten said as he got up to leave.

 

After he had left, Lister turned to Cat.

“Do you think there’s any truth in what Kryten was just talking about?”

Cat pressed pause on his music player and pulled a pair of earphones out of his ears.

“Who was talking about what?!”

“Forget it,” said Lister rolling his eyes.

 

Kryten had the pleasure of walking in on Sam and Rimmer engaging in a particularly long and eventful game of tonsil hockey that afternoon in the drive room. The former was sat on one of the consoles with her legs wrapped around the latter’s waist.

“No Arnold not there!” squealed Sam excitedly, as the hologram began kissing her neck.  
“That tickles! That tickles!”

“Ahem,” said Kryten,  
“If I could possibly ask the two of you to refrain from consuming each other for a moment or two I would like to have a word with Mr Rimmer.

“They’ve been at that for the past half hour at least Kryten,” said Holly,  
“Not that I’ve been watching or anything,” he looked down guiltily.

Sam was blushing to the hilt.

“Sorry Kryten, we just...” she mumbled.

“What is it Kryten!?” snapped Rimmer.  
“And you’d better have a damn good reason for interrupting me!”

“There is a discussion that we need to have sir.”

“And that needs to take place right now does it!?”

“I’m afraid so sir.”

“I guess I’ll be leaving you boys to it,” said Sam, sliding down of the console.

“Don’t miss me while I’m gone,” she said to Rimmer, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek on her way out.

 

“Well spit it out Kryten!” said the hologram impatiently, once Sam had left.

 

“Well you see Mr Rimmer the thing is, we thought you might have forgotten that Miss Samantha is going home this afternoon?”

“No I hadn’t forgotten.”

“Right, you do realise that that is where she lives don’t you sir?”

“For the time being yes.”

“What do you mean for the time being?”

“Well she’s going to move onto the ship.”

“Sir you can’t really be serious!”

“I’m deadly serious Kryten, I can’t go and live with her can I? A domestic power supply would never sustain me, you know that as well as I do!”

“Sir, have you actually spoken with Miss Samantha about this?”

“Of course I have Kryten! What do you take me for?! We discussed it this afternoon.”

“And she’s really ok with it?”

“Kryten where is this going?”

“Mr Rimmer sir, do you think that you have truly considered the long term implications of being in a relationship with this woman?”

“Kryten let me just tell you now, you a bordering on a kick in the recharge socket!”

“Sir, I’m just asking you to put yourself in Miss Samantha’s shoes.  
Do you really think that she would want to commit to being stuck in deep space for the rest of her life?” 

Rimmer paused for a moment, he hadn’t thought about that, but it was no big deal as far as he was concerned.

“She’ll get used to it,” he replied eventually.

“Really sir?” said Kryten gently,  
“Could any young woman truly be happy to live out the rest of her days with the four of us? No one of her age group? No other women?”

“She’ll adjust,” was Rimmer’s reply.

“And what will happen when she realises that she wants a taste of normal life, she wants to get married, she wants to be with someone who’s not dead!”

“Kryten!” said Rimmer in a warning tone of voice.

“Yes sir I know you hate being reminded of your...‘status’ but I felt that it was a valid point to make.”

“Sam doesn’t care about my ‘status’, she loves me for who I am, not what I am.”

“What about when she comes to want children sir?”

Kryten noticed that this question had affected the man in front of him greatly, Rimmer’s face suddenly seemed to reflect doubt, a good deal of it.  
The mechanoid knew that he had touched a nerve.

“We don’t need children to be happy” he said, although Kryten could hear the weakness in his voice, could see the doubt upon his face.

But then the hologram vehemently shook his head and launched into a full blown rant.

“No, no I know why you’re doing this Kryten! It’s because you can’t stand to see me happy isn’t it? As a matter of fact you’re probably all in on this aren’t you? What, is this some kind of punishment for my so called smeg-headed behaviour over the years?”

“Sir it is nothing of that kind!” cried the mech defensively.

“Let’s rip old Rimsy’s heart out and stamp all over it is that it!?” Oh wait! He doesn’t have one does he?! Because he’s just a computer simulation! Which means that he’s clearly not entitled to the same things in life as a living person would be, is he?!”

“No sir, I promise you it’s not about that at all!” Kryten had raised his own voice.

“It’s always the same with you isn’t it Kryten? Humans will always take priority over me, and so my wellbeing and happiness is of no interest to you whatsoever!”

“Sir, if you would just let me explain...”

“I think I’d like you to leave Kryten.”

“Sir I...”

“NOW, Kryten.” 

The mechanoid didn’t much care for the ferocity of emotion reflected in the hologram’s eyes and so he did leave, leaving a furiously upset Rimmer in his wake.

‘Kryten’s talking rubbish,’ he thought. ‘I would never make Sam do something she didn’t want to do. But am I being selfish? Is it selfish of me to expect her to spend the rest of her life in deep space, stuck with four middle-aged men?’

She will surely want to be a mother at some point won’t she? That’s something I will never be able to give her.  
She says she loves me and she wants to stay, but maybe she’s not thinking straight, in the same way that I wasn’t?’

Kryten had planted many seeds of doubt in the holograms mind.

‘I’m trapping her, not intentionally, but trapping her all the same.  
I’m condemning her to a life that no young woman should ever be condemned to.’

Rimmer banged his fist down on the dashboard in frustration.

 

He hated Kryten for saying those things...but what he hated even more was the fact that the mechanoid was very probably right.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a lot of heightened emotions going on here, and poor Kryten gets a bit of abuse :(
> 
> But it’s ok because Rimmer loves him really...deep down...somewhere...

“How you doing?” asked Lister when he found Rimmer a little later on.

The hologram was in the holo-suite leaning back in a chair, his long legs resting on the table. He appeared to be deep in thought.

“Fine, I’m just running some updates.”

“Where’s Sam?” 

“In our bedroom, deciding where she’s going to keep her make-up and jewellery,” he said, giving Lister a meaningful look.

“I take it you’ve spoken to Kryten then?”

“I suppose you’re in on this as well are you?” replied Rimmer.

“No I’m not, in fact I completely disagree with him!”

“You do?”

“Look Rimmer, if I could get another chance with Kochanski, I’d take it like a shot!”

 

“Yes well Sam isn’t Kochanski, Lister.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well for a start Kochanksi knew her way around the ship!  
Sam knows nothing about the ship! She knows nothing about being in space! Lister she runs down a couple of sets of stairs and gets lost!”

“Hey now come on! She’s pretty good at finding her way round the habitation deck!”

“Lister, I found her down in Starbug yesterday.”

“What the smeg was she doing down in the landing bay?”

“Running away from me.”

“Why was she running away from you?”

“Hmm yes, now just why was she running away?,” he put his finger to his lips in mock thoughtfulness.  
“Apparently someone had given her the idea that I was a psychotic woman beater...”

“Ah, smeg,” said Lister, “That was probably me, she must have took what I said the wrong way.”

“I know it was you Lister,” said the hologram nodding knowingly at him.

“Sorry,” he replied feebly.

But Rimmer didn’t seem overly concerned at getting an apology out of the scouser, choosing instead to continue his earlier conversation thread.

“How long did it take us to adjust when we signed up to the JMC, Lister?”

“Quite a while,” admitted the other man.

“Oh Lister,” he growled in frustration,  
“I really don’t understand how something can feel simultaneously right and wrong at the same time! I love the bones of her, and that part feels right...but the idea of forcing her into our way of life!?  
It feels wrong Lister, it feels really wrong.  
And look at the amount of danger we get into on a daily basis? How can I even begin to keep her safe from all that? She’s never used a gun! She has zero combat skills!”

“Wow Kryten really has got to you hasn’t he?”

“You sit there and tell me that the things I’ve just said aren’t true?”

Lister hesitated for a moment,

“I suppose I can’t.”

“And on top of all that, I’m infertile!”

“What are you talking about Rimmer? The sperm donations we gave when we signed up are all completely safe down on the cryo-deck, I was checking them out the other day. I know bringing up a child in deep space is a bit...”

“I didn’t donate Lister.”

The other man’s face screwed up in bewilderment.

“Why the smeg not?”

The hologram raised his eyes to the ceiling as if he were expecting a mocking retort for what he was about to say.

“I thought my sample would be inferior, and that everyone would rip the smeg out of me.”

“You what?!”

“If you remember Lister I wasn’t exactly Mr Popular on the ship! I didn’t want to give any of your ‘hooligan mates’ another reason to make my life hell! And you would have joined in with them I know you would!”

“But Rimmer sperm is just sperm, its all the same.”

“Oh mine would have probably been mutated you can count on that! I expect the majority of them were headless, it would have just been a sea of tails endlessly swimming round in circles!”

“But Rimmer,” said Lister, with a dawning realisation,  
“We donated those samples alongside our personality discs, so that if anyone was resurrected as a hologram, they would be able to reproduce.”

“Ironic isn’t it?’ said the other man sadly.

They were both silent for a while.  
Then Rimmer spoke again.

“Look at Sam, Lister, she’s perfect in every way imaginable.

She’s beautiful, she’s kind, she’s empathetic, she’s...well she’s perfect.

Someone like me doesn’t get to be with someone like her,” he said cheerlessly.

The solemn look of resignation on the hologram’s face told Lister that the man had more or less already made his mind up on the matter.

He wasn’t really sure what to say.

“Look Rimmer, I totally get where you’re coming from about Sam being out of her depth here and everything but, what about love?  
You love each other?”

 

“What if love isn’t enough Lister?  
What if several years down the line she starts to resent me? Resent me for taking away her chance for a normal life? I couldn’t bear that.”

“So you’re really gonna end it?”

“I have to Lister,” said the hologram, getting up and walking past him,  
“I just have to.”

 

 

“Alright?” Sam asked Rimmer when she saw him. She was currently involved in a game of fetch in the corridor with Bob.

“Sam we need to talk.”

“Ok, just a couple more goes.”

“Now Sam!”

The severity of his tone startled her a little.

“Alright,” she said getting up, “You don’t have get your H in a twist!”

‘She’s mocking my H,’ he thought sadly, ‘She’s starting to belong here already...’

He took her hand in his and led her to their bedroom.

“This sounds like it’s going to be serious,” she said, smiling uneasily.

Once they had reached their quarters he didn’t speak for a long time.

“I have something really difficult to say Sam, but I know I have to say it.” 

“This definitely sounds serious.”

“You need to go home.”

“I am, this afternoon remember? I’ll let my parents know I’m ok and then we can start moving my stuff across to here. There shouldn’t really be that much...”

“No Sam, I mean you need to go there and you need to stay there.”

“What?” her face echoed the puzzlement in her voice.

“We can’t be together,” he said, trying to keep his voice from breaking with emotion.

“But we are together.”

He took her head in his hands.

“I’m not right for you Sam, you need to be with someone your own age, someone who can give you a normal life. You don’t deserve to be stuck in deep space with me for the rest of your life.”

“Maybe I want to be,” she replied simply.

“I don’t think you’ve really thought this through properly though have you?” he said in a gentle voice.

“Arnold why are you doing this?” her beautiful blue eyes implored him.

“Because you deserve better Sam that’s why.”

“Look Arnold,” she said, removing his hands from her face and taking them in her hands,  
“I love you, and I want to stay here. I do!”

“But you know nothing about living in deep space!”

“I can learn! You can teach me! You can all teach me!”

Rimmer paused before saying,

“I can’t give you children Sam.”

“I don’t want children,” she said rigidly, although it was hard to tell if she was being truthful or not.

“You’ll change your mind at some point, you know you will,” he said sadly, walking away from her.

When he turned back to face her, it took every ounce of restraint he had not to pull her into his arms, kiss her and tell her that everything would be alright. 

“You deserve better than the life I can give you.”

“Is this because I smoke?” she said, a note of asperity to her voice.  
“Because I drink? Or is it because I’m hideously uneducated?”

“No Sam, it’s none of those things.”

“Am I not good enough for you?” she said, after a pause.

“You are more than good enough for me, I love you!”

“If you loved me Arnold, you wouldn’t be behaving like a complete arsehole.”

“But Sam don’t you get it! I’m doing this BECAUSE I love you! I’m setting you free!”

“Right, and I don’t get a say in this then?”

She was starting to get annoyed, and this wasn’t the direction he wanted the discussion to go in.

“Sam you know how vulnerable you are, how emotionally unstable...”

The slap hit him like a bolt from the blue, but he noticed that she was feeling the pain of it a lot more than he was.

“Let me see your hand,” he said, making to grab it.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” she spat at him and he flinched, almost as if he had received an electric shock.  
“How dare you bring my mental instability into this!  
That’s low Arnold, that’s really low.”

“No Sam, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that!”

Now she was both annoyed and upset, and that definitely wasn’t how he had wanted things to go.

 

Tears filled her eyes, and her next words were full of a resentment that he wouldn’t have believed she was capable of feeling.

“So what was all that crap about protecting me then Arnold? All that stuff you said to me in the bar? Was it just a load of macho bullshit? Did it make you feel like more of a man?” Make your dick feel bigger did it?”

He was momentarily stunned into silence by her outburst of profanity.

“Because who’s gonna protect me now huh?” tears began to spill down her cheeks.  
“Who’s gonna protect me from the next man who’s gonna come along and take advantage of me?”

“Sam...I.”

“But then you’re just like them aren’t you?”

His face suddenly paled considerably.

“Please don’t say that.”

“But you are! Ok so you haven’t abused me physically, but up here,” she pointed to her brain, “up here you’ve abused me. You’ve made me fall in love with you and now you’re dropping me like I’m nothing!”

She began to slap him in the chest, until the palms of her delicate hands turned an angry pink colour.

He grabbed hold of her wrists,

“You are going to hurt yourself,” he said softly.

“Like you care,” she said.

She attempted to free herself from his grasp, and when she couldn’t, she looked up at him. 

Blue eyes cold and emotionless, she said,  
“Take your hands off me.”

But he didn’t straight away, he couldn’t. It was the last connection between them, and he knew that more than ever now. If he let go of her she’d leave, and then he’d lose her forever.

‘But that’s what you wanted isn’t it Rimmer?

Not like this,’ he argued with himself, ‘Not like this.’

“Take your fucking hands off me,” she said in a voice dripping with poison. 

And he eventually did, slowly and reluctantly. 

She wiped at her tears with the back of her hand and headed for the door.  
Right before she left she turned back to him,

“What the hell did I ever see in you in the first place? Thanks for ‘setting me free’ Arnold,” she said sarcastically,  
“You’ve done me a big fucking favour!”

 

She left the room and Rimmer began to cry.  
This wasn’t how things were supposed to go! He’d planned it out in his head, he would talk to her calmly and quietly and she would understand. She would get it, she’d get what he was trying to do for her. Sure she’d be upset, but not to the extent that she had been. 

He slid down the wall and came to rest on his haunches, face in his hands and tears flowing freely, knowing that he had just made the biggest mistake of his death.

 

 

He lost track of how long he had been sitting there, crying his eyes out like a little boy who had misplaced his favourite teddy bear. 

After a while though, he knew he needed to pull himself together. He still had time to fix this, he still had time to make things right with her, although he was fully aware that fixing this situation would prove to be a lot more difficult than fixing an unwanted kiss.

He stormed into the bunk room where he found Lister and Cat playing cards.

“Have you seen Sam?”

Lister’s facial expression didn’t comfort him in any way.

“She’s gone Rimmer.”

“What do you mean she’s gone?!”

“I mean, she’s gone home.”

That knocked him for a loop.

‘I’m too late...I wasted too much time feeling sorry for myself and now I’m too late!  
I don’t know where she lives...I can’t make this right, I can’t ever make this right!  
This is all my fault, it’s all my fault..if only I had...’  
Wait a minute...’

His brain did a quick 360,

‘This isn’t my fault...this is...’

 

“Where’s Kryten?” he asked in a threatening voice, his nostrils at full flaring capacity.

“Rimmer what are you going to do?” asked Lister, beginning to sound worried.

“Bud, he looks like he’s about to explode! If those nostrils get any wider, he’s gonna swallow us whole!”

“Where is Kryten?” repeated Rimmer slowly.

“He’s not here,” said Lister, hoping against hope that Rimmer would hurry up and leave before Kryten turned up with their evening beverages.

‘No such luck,’ he thought as he heard the mechanoid come clomping down the hallway.

“Now sirs, we appear to have run out of the chocolate cookies so I...,” the mechanoid suddenly squealed as he found himself pinned up against the wall by his rubber throat, causing the tray to get thrown across the room and the contents to be scattered all over the floor.

“Nice one alphabet head! I’ve been looking forward to my hot milk and cookies all day!” Cat moaned.

“This is all your fault Kryten! I have just lost the most beautiful woman in the whole universe and its all down to you!” Rimmer screamed into the mech’s face.

“Rimmer let him go!” cried Lister, trying fruitfully to pull the hologram away from the terrified droid.

“I was just was trying to help, Mr Rimmer sir! I was trying to prevent you from getting hurt!”

“Kryten all you have succeeded in doing is making the hurt one hundred times worse!  
Why did you put those thoughts into my head?!”

“I’m sorry sir!” squealed Kryten, “I really thought I was doing the right thing!”

“Rimmer! Put Kryten down this instant! I’m serious! Rimmer!” he slapped the man on the shoulder,

“You are better than this!”

The hologram slowly released his hold on Kryten’s neck and turned to leave, pushing past Lister as he stormed his way out of the doorway.

 

“Are you alright Krytes?” 

“No sir, I am not,” replied the mechanoid.

“Okay, well let’s get you to your repair station.”

“Oh no sir I’m perfectly fine in that respect, he didn’t use much force I’m pleased to say,” he said stretching his neck out. 

“The reason I am not alright is because every time I think I’ve grasped human behaviour, I get it wrong! Just like I have this time!  
Whatever possessed me to think that I knew what was best for Mr Rimmer and Miss Samantha?”

The next line was delivered in the mechanoid’s high pitched squealing tone.

“Oh why did I have to go and interfere? It wasn’t my place to do so was it Mr Lister? And please don’t say ‘I told you so!’ I can see in your eyes that you’re going to!

Then in his calmer voice he said,

“I need to remember that I am nothing more than a sanitation droid, I will never understand what it is to be human, and so how can I presume to tell humans how they should live their lives?

“Kryten, you’ve just done the most humanly thing there is! You’ve made a mistake! That’s the thing us humans spend most of our lives doing! Well, I know I do.”

The mechanoid seemed to brighten up at this,

“Maybe you’re right sir...but I still feel so terrible about what I’ve done.”

“Yep, that’s human too Krytes.”

“I’m not sure Mr Rimmer will ever forgive me, what if he never speaks to me again?”

“I’d count yourself lucky,” said Cat, who now appeared to be playing the game of cards with himself.

“It’ll be alright Krytes,” Lister said, attempting to reassure the mech. 

Deep down though Lister was feeling more than a little uncomfortable about the hologram’s foul mood, and something told him things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got better.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Rimmer is bat-crap crazy here...because I love the thought of him being that way...

Over in the bunk room Lister and Cat had swapped their game of cards for a round of Mineopoly. Cat, however couldn’t grasp the rules of the game no matter times the scouser tried to explain them to him.

“Cat you’ve landed on that space station, you need to buy it!”

“I don’t wanna buy no damn space station! Look at how run down it is!”

Lister put his head in his hands.

“Cat you’ve been round the board seven times now and you haven’t bought a single property!”

“That’s cos I don’t like the look of any of them!”

“But you have to buy stuff! That’s the whole point of the smeggin game!”

“Hey,” said Cat, pointing his finger at Lister,  
I know your game! You’re trying to psyche me out! Trying to make me lose! I’ll buy a property when I’m good and ready to bud! Don’t think you can push me!”

And so Lister had eventually given up.  
It wasn’t so bad in the end though as the game naturally turned out to be extremely easy for him and so he could win without having to cheat, unlike when he played against Rimmer.

Suddenly, the lightbulb above their heads flared.

“Oh smeg, please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” said Lister.

“Code dark blue, code dark blue,”  
Holly’s face appeared on the screen. 

“Where Hol?”

“Parrots.”

“What’s the damage situation?”

“I can’t be sure Dave, the camera’s just been knocked out by a jukebox.”

“Oh not the jukebox Rimmer,” moaned Lister,  
“We’re never gonna be able to replace that.”

Kryten entered the bunk room.

“Code dark blue Krytes.”

“Yes I heard sir, I suppose it is to be expected.  
I’ll get the straws.”

Kryten prepared the straws in the jar and they each picked one out.  
Lister ended up with the short one.

He sighed,  
“Why do I get the feeling this is always rigged?”

“I don’t know what you mean sir,” replied Kryten, an overly innocent expression on his face.

After a quick study of the mech’s face, Car mirrored Kryten’s expression.

“Don’t know what you mean bud!”

“Well it’s pretty obvious isn’t it?! We know Cat’s gonna make the situation ten times worse, and you’re too scared to go in there Kryten! I don’t know why we even bother to play this stupid game!”

“Well sir,” said Kryten timidly,  
“You do have a way with him.”

Lister couldn’t argue with that, their many years of friendship had sealed the bond between them. If anyone could cut through Rimmer’s destructive episodes it was Lister.  
At least that had always been the case up until now.

The scouser couldn’t believe the level of destruction when he set foot in the bar. 

‘The skutters are gonna have their work cut out here,” he thought.

The hologram was in the middle of punching merry hell out of the overturned cigarette machine.

Lister cleared his throat.

“Look Rimmer, I know you hate smoking, but I think that’s taking things a bit too far isn’t it?”

The look that he received made his blood run cold. 

Humour clearly wasn’t going to be the best tactic here then. He should have known that to begin with.

“Rimmer stop doing that.”

When the hologram ignored him he shouted louder,

“Rimmer I think you’ve caused enough destruction don’t you?!”

“It’s not nearly enough!!” roared the hologram.

“She hates me Lister! She hates me!”  
A bar stool was flung in the shorter mans direction and he side stepped just in time to avoid it.

“You need to stop this!”

At which point a table came flying in his direction.

“Rimmer that almost hit me!” cried the scouser angrily.

“She’s gone Lister! She’s gone and I’ll never get her back!”

“I know she has man but you’ve gotta stop this! You’re gonna bugger up your light-bee again!” 

“I don’t care!” was shouted back at him.  
“There’s no point! There’s no point in anything anymore!”

He went back to abusing the cigarette machine.

“For smeg’s sake Rimmer pack it in! You’re behaving like a two year old!”

At this the hologram paused in his destruction and said so quietly that Lister had to strain to hear.

“Get out Lister.”

“What?”

Rimmer looked up at him and screamed at the top of his voice,  
“I said get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!”

Lister didn’t move straight away, he was stunned by the sight in front of him.

‘My god he’s totally lost it.’

He did however shoot out the door quicker than anything when the other man began advancing on him, fists clenched and a burning fury blazing in his eyes.

Thankfully the hologram didn’t follow him out of the room, but the crashing noises told Lister that he had resumed his destruction.

He made his way to the bunk room at a great speed.

Kryten was most discouraged by the state the man was in.

“I take it that didn’t go terribly well sir?”

“There is no way I am going in that room again! Not with him like that! I’ve never seen him like this Kryten, it’s bad.”

“You don’t think it will come down to...?” Kryten couldn’t finish the sentence.

Lister shook his head firmly.

Switching Rimmer off was the last thing he wanted to do, it was nothing short of murder in his eyes.

The scouser sighed in frustration,

“There’s nothing for it, we’ll have to leave the ship.”

“Unfortunately that won’t be an option at the present moment sir, a severe dust storm has just started up outside, it wouldn’t be safe!”

‘Probably a lot smeggin safer than staying on here,’ thought Lister.  
‘God I hope Sam made it home ok.’

“Are you saying that we’re trapped on this ship with psychotic non-bud!?”

“Afraid so sir,”

“Ideas Krytes?”

“Well I could try and force him into soft-light mode, providing he hasn’t password protected it. It will take me some time though.”

“Ok, you do that, me and Cat are gonna make our way up to the top deck.”

It seemed like a pretty lousy idea when Lister thought about it, putting a vast amount of distance between them and the bar wouldn’t make any difference.  
If Rimmer decided to take his frustration out on them, he’d find them wherever they were on the ship. 

It was however the only thing he could think of doing at the current moment in time.  
He did feel bad for leaving Krtyen behind, but the mech was tougher than him and Cat put together, and this so this allayed his guilt a little.  
Besides he was in the holo-suite, inches away from the ‘switch.’  
Although Lister prayed that Krtyen wouldn’t have to use it.

‘Please don’t come after us Rimmer, please don’t make us do what we really don’t want to do.’ 

Please don’t make us have to kill you...’

 

Upon reaching the lift they heard a crashing noise and Lister shot Cat a concerned look,

“That sounded like it was coming from the landing bay.”

He paused for a moment before saying,

“You did seal the landing bay door after you let Sam out didn’t you?”

Cat grimaced.

Lister pinched the bridge of his nose,

“Please tell me you retracted the steps at least?”

Cats grimace increased,

“I don’t smeggin believe you!”

“It’s not my fault bud! There was a shiny thing down there! One I ain’t never seen before, I got it right here if you wanna see...”

“Great so we’ve basically just sent out a huge advertisement welcoming the whole of Jupiter onto our ship!  
Come on, we’ll have to go and get the bazookoids.”

Lister didn’t need this. He really didn’t need a potentially hostile situation down in the landing bay anymore than he needed a rogue hologram tearing the bar to pieces.

When they got down to the landing bay however, they couldn’t hear anything except for the howling wind, which was almost deafening.  
Kryten had indeed been right about the severity of the storm.  
The floor was covered in sand from where the door had been left open, and Starbug and Blue Midget were almost buried.

 

They checked out the entire room and were about to leave when Lister suddenly saw something move behind a stack of crates.  
Him and Cat both raised their weapons in preparation for attack.

A figure appeared, and Lister only just recognised her in time before he pulled the trigger.

“Sam! For smeg’s sake I nearly bleedin shot you! What are you doing down here?! He shouted over the stop of the storm.

“I got lost,” she shouted, but her voice was lost in the roar of the gale.

“Cat go and shut that door, and make sure you actually do it this time!”

“On it bud!!

Once the door was sealed Sam repeated,

“I got lost.”

“We thought you’d gone home!”

“I noticed the storm building, and I knew I wouldn’t make it home in time,” and then she added a little timidly,

“I also didn’t want to leave things the way I did with Arnold.”

“What happened to your face?” he asked, noticing a bruise forming on her forehead.

“Oh yeah, I tripped over a box.”

“So that’s what that crashing noise was,” said Cat.

“Well I’ve got to say that I am more than happy to see you!” said Lister. 

“Why, whats going on?”

“Goal-post head has gone bat crap crazy!”

“You mean, destructive crazy?”

The two men nodded.

“And you really think I can fix that?”

“I know you can Sam, come on!” Lister grabbed her arm.

 

“I’m sorry sirs,” said Kryten when they returned to the suite.  
“I’m afraid Mr Rimmer has indeed password protected his soft-light software and I am completely unable to access it!”

“Did you try Uncle Frank?” asked Cat.

“I have tried everything I can think of!” 

“Don’t worry Kryten it’s gonna be alright now,” said Lister. 

“How so?”

“Because I’ve found Rimmer’s kryptonite,” he said, pulling Sam into the room.

“Why Miss Samantha, you came back!” Kryten was overjoyed.  
“Does this mean that you still love Mr Rimmer?”

“Of course I still love him Kryten, I was just annoyed about the things he said to me.  
He behaved like a complete twat.”

“Well Miss I’m afraid I have a confession to make...It was me that persuaded Mr Rimmer to break it off with you.”

She folded her arms and fixed the mechanoid with a fierce look.

“Why would you do that Kryten?”

The mech’s bottom lip trembled and he didn’t reply straight away.

Lister stepped in,

“Don’t be too hard on him Sam, he thought he was doing the right thing.’

“How could something like that ever be the right thing to do?!”

“I was worried that you might be unhappy living with us, Miss. I was worried that Mr Rimmer might have been trapping you.  
Can you ever forgive me for making such a fool of myself?”

She regarded him for a long while, arms still folded.

Eventually she sighed,

“It’s alright Kryten, I know you meant well.”

The mechanoid was instantly relieved,

“Well you must go and see him at once Miss!”

“Don’t worry, she is!” said Lister grabbing her arm and pulling her out the door,  
“This situation is getting sorted now!”

 

 

Rimmer hadn’t planned on destroying the bar, it had just sort of happened. The way things do sometimes when the mind spirals out of control. He had gone there to get himself a whiskey, but upon discovering that here wasn’t any, had flung the bottles across the room, more than satisfied to hear the smash as they hit the wall.

All at once though, the sound of bottles breaking was nowhere near satisfying enough, and so chairs and tables got thrown into the mix.  
Even the bar itself had ended up on its side. He caught sight of their lemonade bottles from earlier in the day and that induced a fresh wave of pain and frustration.  
No matter how much destruction he caused though, it didn’t ease the hurt,  
the hurt of losing the love of a woman he cared for so dearly. The cigarette machine and the jukebox were yanked from the wall and kicked across the room, and once he had nothing left in the room to destroy, he began punching and kicking the walls.  
The emotional anguish wasn’t getting any better though...if anything, it was getting worse.

He was in the midst of kicking the living daylights out of a neon sign when he had a sudden realisation of what he should do.  
The voice was crystal clear in his head.

‘I’m going to switch myself off...Right after I’ve obliterated this sign!’

He picked the sign up, and was just about to haul it at the wall, when he heard Lister’s telltale plodding out in the corridor.

“I told you to get out Lister!”

“I guess that means there’s no chance of a lemonade?”

That voice, that sweet and delicate voice could only belong to one person.

He turned around to see the woman he adored framed in the doorway, seeming to be more fragile and beautiful than ever amidst the chaos of the bar.

“My little angel,” he said, his rage melting away instantly. 

Lister smirked a little at the pet name Rimmer appeared to have formulated for her. The man had never in all the years he’d known him struck him to be a guy who used terms like that.

Sam came into the room.

“Holy fuck,” she said surveying the damage,  
“Looks like someone needs a hug.”

Rimmer didn’t say anything, he just stared at her.

“You might want to put the sign down Rimmer,” said Lister from the doorway.

Rimmer did so.

“I thought, I thought you’d gone...I thought I’d never see you again.  
He frowned at her,  
“What happened to your head?”

“I fell over down in the landing bay, it seems I have a talent for injuring myself on this ship,” she said, holding up her bruised finger from the day before.

“She got lost trying to get back up to the habitation decks,” said Lister smiling.

“I think I’ll have to get you guys to draw me a map,” she chuckled softly.

Despite having questioned her about her head, the hologram didn’t appear to have heard the last few lines of dialogue.  
He was looking at Sam almost as if she were a ghost.

“I thought you hated me,” he said.

“I could never hate you,” she replied,  
“I was just upset, I thought you didn’t want me.”

“Kryten...”

“I know, he told me.”

“I want you more than anything Sam, but I thought it was selfish of me to expect that you would want the same thing.”

“Well you should listen to me next time!..Now am I gonna get a hug or not?”

He wrapped his arms around her middle and lifted her up so that she was completely off the floor.

“I’m sorry for slapping you,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said softly, kissing the bruise on her head.  
“But Sam, I can’t give you a normal life here, if anything it’s going to be the exact opposite of normal!”

“I don’t care,” she said, looking deeply into his eyes.  
He got lost in her beautiful blue irises, as he always did, and was reassured by the sincerity reflected in them.

 

“I love you Arnold, and I don’t want to spend another second of my life without you.”

“And you would sacrifice a normal life just to be with me?”

She nodded.

“You’re completely mad,” he said, but he was smiling as he said it.

“The question is though Arnold,  
Do you want me to stay?”

Instead of answering, he kissed her passionately. 

It was actually a rather comical sight.  
The current state of the room could never in a million years be termed as romantic.

Lister turned to notice that Cat and Kryten had joined him.

“Oh man! That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen! When are they gonna come up for air?”

“I don’t know,” said Lister fondly,  
“I think it’s quite romantic.”

He noticed that Kryten had a huge smile on his face.

“Do you think he might forgive me now sir?”

Lister regarded the couple in front of them, who were still locked in a kissing embrace.

“Yeah I think you’ll be alright there Kryten.”

 

“So what exactly is the situation here then sir?”

“The situation is Kryten, that we’ve now got a new crew member!”

“Well I certainly don’t got a problem with having a lady around!” said Cat.

“Me neither,” said Kryten. 

And then he added with a touch of emotion.

“Our little family has just got that bit bigger!”

“You’re damn right it has,” said Lister.

 

Fin

To be continued...


End file.
